Fault Lines (A Love in Japan Fiction)
by TheMetaBard
Summary: Tragedy strikes for the young Irie family and Naoki finds himself alone, on the edge of breaking. It's up to Reagan, a precocious American woman to keep the fault lines of Naoki Irie from shattering all together. Based on the live-action Love in Tokyo version. Naoki x OC. Kotoko may or may not be dead. Oops.
1. Chapter 1

**Anyway, like I was saying, I really only use CrunchyRoll to binge-watch Dragonball Z on an endless loop until the destruction of the universe under Supreme Lord Trump. But I happened upon the 'Drama' section by accident and found _Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo._ Which is great, since it was a super cute show and everyone was super cute and it had a happy ending, but it was also horrible since it was a super cute show and everyone was super cute and it had a happy ending. So I'm extending/rewriting it. Drama/Tragedy/Psychological, NaokixOC sort of and Kotoko may or may not be dead. Enjoy and review pls!**

* * *

Reagan was confused. Okay, she was a little more than confused. She surveyed where her surroundings, watching pedestrians sidestep around her without even a second glance as she stood as an obstacle in the middle of the pavement. The sun was hot overhead and the humidity was making her curly blonde hair puff up.

 _This was not how she pictured Japan._ And her very, _very_ limited Japanese only made it harder. She pushed her hair out of her face and placed her attention back on her cellphone, graphical lines making up a topographical map of Tokyo as she tried to maneuver her way through this gigantic city. She tried looking for landmarks she knew. _Shibuya_ , _Hirajuku,_ etc. But there wasn't very much context to go off of.

Her company offered her a cab to be there waiting for her at the airport. _No, no. It's my first time in Japan!_ She had drawled in her slight Georgia accent. _It would be fun to walk it and explore it._ That's how she always did it in other cities. But then again, other cities weren't as downright _massive_ as Tokyo.

She was going to have to get used to it. She was stuck here. At least for a little while.

Reagan followed the blue arrow on her cellphone as it GPS'd her movements and showed her where to turn with the patience of a teacher talking to a very small child. She looked up for a second to make sure she wasn't going to face-plant with a vending machine or a trashcan or, worse, a slowing group of people as they all made their way to their various destinations in this confusing city.

 _That's weird._ She regarded for a second, a man standing at the railing of a bridge. But he wasn't standing at the railing of a bridge. She's seen plenty of people doing that back at another bridge: tourists taking pictures, men smoking while talking on the phone, couples enjoying the view. No. This man was standing _in front of_ the railing, his knuckles white as he gripped the metal behind him.

Reagan's blood ran cold in her veins when she realized what was happening. She frantically looked around for help, but unlike the other bridge she crossed, that was in the middle of a metropolitan area, this one was empty. His head dropped towards the water and his shoulders were shaking.

She ran towards him. "Sir," She called out as calmly as she could sound. She didn't want to spook him and accidently slip off the edge. His head snapped to her, a wild, desperate look in his brown eyes. "Sir, come back over the railing, please."

His brown hair flipped in the breeze as his head snapped back towards the water and then back at her. He started chattering in Japanese, his facial features contorting with pain.

 _"Gomennasai."_ Reagan pleaded, panic making her heart pound in her head. " _Watashi wa nihongo ga sukoshi shika hanasemasen." I only speak a little Japanese._ Rehearsed words. It was the first full phrase she committed to memory when she got her assignment to come here. _"If I had a dollar for every time I'm going to use this phrase..."_ She had laughed with a coworker.

"Leave me be!" He screamed. Words she could understand. He then launched back into a flurry of Japanese, tears running red track marks down his face.

"Do you know English?" She approached slowly, trying to get in range to grab him if necessary. _What was the number for emergency? 999? No, that's England. Shit. Shit!_ Her thoughts were all convoluted as she tried to remember how to ask in Japanese if he spoke English.

"Yes," He said, in an accent almost better than her own. The desperation in his voice and the darkness in his eyes made Reagan wonder what brought him here. What tragedy must've taken place to drive him to suicide? What happened to make you think that life wasn't worth living?

"What can I do to help?" She pleaded softly, letting the wind whip her hair. "Please, let me help you."

"No," He shook his head and looked back down at the water. "It's no use."

"What's your name?" She tried again. _119? Was that the number? Shit. Shit. Shit._ He just shook his head again, his knuckles gripping tighter to the metal railing of the bridge. She took this as a cue to stall. "My name is Reagan."

"Go away, Reagan-san." He said darkly. "I will not make this your responsibility."

"No!" She yelled, not even recognizing her own voice in her ears. "I will not let you do this." She looked down at the water, it was green and blue and churned wildly with the wind and without thinking, she grabbed his wrist. She brushed lines and lines of scars and could feel her heart drop into her stomach. "If you jump, then I'm jumping too."

 _This was not how she pictured Japan._

* * *

Kotoko looked down at the brown eyes that were tracking her as she moved around the nursery, putting away clothes and supplies. _Aww, she has your nose!_ Oba-sama had said that when she was still in the hospital. Kotoko was actually surprised how many times people compared Kotomi to herself or to Naoki. It seemed to be the conversation-started along with _How old is she?_ and _She is so cute!_

Kotoko didn't see it at first. Actually, Kotoko made the comparison of Kotomi and a pickled prune a couple of times. She actually was scared for a second if that's how Kotomi was going to look forever: purple, wrinkled, and pinched like she had just tasted something sour. But as the months went on, Kotomi's skin turned a pretty pink, her face turned round and her eyes grew bright and curious. And Kotoko could actually see that Kotomi was going to have her nose and her father's cheek dimples. Oba-sama was correct.

She lifted the baby to her shoulder. Kotoko wasn't good at much. She did graduate in Class F, the worst class in the school. She wasn't good at cooking or sewing or walking or playing sports. She wasn't very good at being a nurse. Heck, most of the time she thought she wasn't a very good wife to Naoki either.

But she was excellent at being Kotomi's mother.

She hummed to herself as she danced with the infant pressed against chest as she used her free hand to fold tiny shirts and pants and onesies and place them in the drawer. The baby hiccupped and then settled, pressing her tiny face into Kotoko's shoulder. Kotoko could feel her breathing underneath her hand as she fell asleep.

"You impress me."

Kotoko jumped at the intrusion and then quickly adjusted to make sure she hadn't wakened the baby. She turned to see her husband, his dark hair and knowing brown eyes staring at her as he leaned in the threshold of the door. He wasn't wearing his lab coat, but he was still in his button-down, his tie hanging loosely around his neck. "Naoki!" She breathed. "I didn't even hear you enter. You're early."

He waved her off and approached her. Even after eight years of knowing Irie-kun and two years of being married to him, he still had the ability to make her heart beat like a ceremony drum in her chest. "The operation got cancelled." He gently lifted the child off of her shoulder and cradled her against his own chest.

"I'll go start dinner then." Kotoko volunteered and moved towards the door.

"No, wait." He said as he grabbed her hand and pulled her close to him, opposite of their daughter. He sighed gently into her hair. Kotoko felt like her chest was going to explode like a fireworks show, but she was also confused. Naoki wasn't the type to initiate affection. She was usually the one to do that.

"Is everything alright?"

There was silence. Kotoko had known Naoki for far too long to know that silence wasn't unusual. He did not really speak unless he thought absolutely necessary. He would rather watch and analyze. "Yes." He finally said. "Sometimes, being a doctor reminds me how precious family is to me."

Kotoko squeezed her eyes shut and reveled in the fact that she was the luckiest girl in the world. She didn't even need a shooting star to tell her that.

* * *

Reagan gripped this strange man's wrist like she was trying to strangle the life out of it. A million emotions crossed his face. Fear, anxiety, anger, regret. Reagan could feel that he was trembling under her touch, and that his hands were cold as ice. She gently stepped on the bottom rung of the railing and maneuvered her leg over, so that she was straddling it.

"If you jump, I jump." She reaffirmed, now that she was eye-level with this lunatic.

His face contorted with tears as he looked back down at the river below them. "I just can't do it anymore." He said, his voice carrying in the wind. Reagan wondered for a second where he learned English, because he spoke it perfectly. "I feel like I am drowning and I can't find which way is up."

"We can get you help." She said as she gripped his wrist with one hand and the railing she was sitting on with the other. Her long blonde hair whipped into her face, making tears sting her own eyes. _Or maybe that was just sympathy._ "You don't have to feel like this."

Reagan watched in horror as his toe slipped off of the precarious edge. In the seconds that he fought to regain his balance, time stood still. She reached forward and embraced his shoulders and threw both of themselves backwards, so that they both fell over the railing onto the safe pavement of the bridge.

She rolled off of him and rubbed the hip that she landed on. "Shit, that hurt." She said. "Are you okay?"

His hair splayed over his forehead as his brown eyes stared blankly towards the sky, tears spilling out of the corners. " _Gomennasai."_ He whispered. Reagan knew that meant _I'm sorry_ and she shivered at the thought of who he was speaking to. _What happened to make you like this?_

"Do you want me to call emergency services?" She asked, but he didn't respond, he just stared at the sky. Reagan took the opportunity to inspect him for wounds. He was wearing a cardigan and a button-down over dark pants. She pressed each leg, looking for broken bones and then started at one wrist. He flinched and recoiled, a flurry of what Reagan assumed were insults, hurled at her direction. "I'm sorry!" She leaned back. "I'm just making sure you're okay."

"I don't need your help." He growled and rolled up and onto his feet. He swayed a little, like he was on a boat before straightening out. "Thank you," He made a complete bow. "For not letting me fall." He stood back up and

Reagan couldn't believe her ears. She had just _saved_ this guy from taking a suicidal leap off of a _bridge._ And this is how he _thanks_ her? "Hey, buddy!" She called after him. "That's all I get?"

He turned and regarded her coolly, a new aura of composure that wasn't there before. His eyes were steel: cold, metal, unfeeling. "Well, what do you want?"

Reagan felt herself crumple a little. She could still feel his wild pulse in her fingertips. _To help you._ "Can I have your name?"

"Irie." He said, his gaze moving from her face to the water that sparkled underneath the sun. "Irie Naoki."

* * *

Naoki could feel a headache coming on behind his eyes. Lack of sleep mixed with the adrenaline wearing off, he presumed. He tried not to think about it as this American blonde girl with eyes as green as grass stared at him like he was going to shatter into a million pieces. Maybe he was. Maybe he was already broken, broken beyond repair.

"Irie Naoki." She repeated with an accent that he had only seen in movies before. He was unsure if it was a put-on, or if there were actually Americans that talked like that. "Do you want me to call an ambulance?"

He recoiled at having doctors, his _colleagues,_ see him in the condition he was in. It made his skin tingle with anxiety. Or maybe disgust. Disgust for himself. He couldn't tell anymore. He shook his head. "No. It was a moment of…psychological weakness. It won't happen again."

This girl wore her emotions in her expressions like a very loud, obnoxious shirt. Her eyes animating with her thoughts in real-time as they ran through her head. It reminded him so much of…

 _No._

He had to get out of here. It felt like the walls of his mind were collapsing in on themselves. He _was_ shattering, one piece lost at a time, every time he was reminded of what he lost.

"Do you want to come over for coffee and let me clean up that wound?" Her face twisted into a purse and her eyes squinted in the sun as she motioned to the blood stain that was starting to bloom on his trousers at the knee. He didn't even realize he was bleeding. "I mean, you gotta admit, you do kind of owe me one."

He didn't want to go anywhere, really, except home where he could drug himself with sleeping pills and sleep this day into a distant memory and screen phone calls from his worried mother. Where he could exist without worrying about who could see the cracks. And he didn't owe this girl anything. Owing her would mean that she did something that he wanted. And he wasn't sure he wanted to be saved. "Okay." So it surprised him when he uttered the words.

Her hair, wild mess of curls that he also was sure only existed in movies until five minutes ago, blew into her face, but he could still see the relief in her eyes.

 _Don't get too close._ A malicious voice cooed gently from the back of his mind. _You'll lose her too._

* * *

Reagan dropped her bag right at the step of the genkan and slid out of her shoes. Her shoulders were starting to ache and stiffen from the fall and stress of it all and she was thinking that she could do with a shot of Jack about now. She glanced up at Naoki, who's expression was blank, except for tightness in his jaw and wondered if he was feeling the same. He stepped out of his shoes and stepped up into her apartment.

She looked around at her company-procured quarters. They were about as western as you could find, with a full washer/dryer set and air-conditioning unit and everything. The only thing that reminded you that you were in Japan was the small genkan right at the door. This both upset and relieved Reagan, as she probably would enjoy stepping into another culture's shoes for awhile, but at the same time, reminded her of her apartment in LA and she didn't feel so far from home.

"If you want to take a seat on the sofa," She motioned to the direction of her living room. "I'll go get some peroxide." She gathered what she needed from the well-stock medicine cabinet and a hand towel and found Naoki sitting on the edge of the couch, staring at his hands.

"You don't have to do this." He said without looking up. "Really."

"You told me you weren't going to make it my responsibility." Reagan retorted and sat down on the coffee table across from him. "So, I'm doing that myself."

" _Fuzakeru na!"_ He barked, a light of fire flickering in his eyes before he extinguished it and recomposed himself. "You don't even know me."

Reagan bent over and picked up Naoki's socked foot to rest in her lap, and hiked his pants leg up to reveal a palm-sized patch of road rash. She remembered getting these when she would try and out-race her brother on her skates. They hurt the worse when you were trying to take care of them. She wondered for a second if that's how Naoki felt. "That's not the issue, though." She said and pressed some gauze and peroxide onto the abrasion. "The issue is that you don't feel like you deserve the help."

"You talk too much." He retorted and winced as she cleaned away the dried blood asphalt from his knee.

"I'm American." She smiled up at him. "It kind of comes with the branding." But instead of responding back he just stared at something to the left of her head, his eyes steeling over. She went back to work and pressed a bandage onto the road rash. "Where did you learn English? You speak it so well." She asked, as casually as one could when you had just rescued someone from throwing themselves off a bridge an hour before.

"School." He shrugged. "I wish I could say the same for you."

"You can't be the judge of that." She argued as she moved to sit next to him on the sofa. "Maybe I'm not that great at English, but I'm very fluent in _Southern._ "

"Southern." He repeated like he was tasting that word for the first time. "That's not a language."

"Sure it is. Like: when you gotta go down to the Winn-Dixie to pick up grits because Paw, bless his heart, said that a good breakfast on a Sunday makes him happier than a flea on a fat dog."

Naoki didn't smile, but Reagan was sure that she could see something in his eyes. Humor, maybe. "Those words, collectively, don't make sense."

"They do if you're from Alabama."

Like the spark of anger before, Naoki quickly extinguished the light humor in his eyes and stood up. "Thank you for the first aid." He bowed. "I think I should go home."

Reagan was surprised at this sudden turn. But knot in her stomach told her that she would regret it if she let him leave. "Wait, wait!" She jumped to her feet and grabbed his wrist. She could feel the lines of scars and he jerked his arm out of her grasp. She disregarded the angry look he gave her. "Are you going to be alright? I mean, they even put suicidal patients in hospitals on a watch for 24 hours at least." She tried to make her voice sound light for such a heavy subject. "I don't want to let my tackling skills go to waste."

Reagan watched as a wave of what looked to be physical pain wash over Naoki's face. "I'll be fine."

 _No you won't._ "Can I call you?" She tried, the knot in her stomach growing. "I just want to make sure you're okay. I won't be able to sleep knowing you might try something again."

He stared at her hard with contempt, but then pulled his wallet out the back pocket of his trousers and pulled a business card out and threw it on the coffee table. "This isn't your responsibility." He muttered mostly to himself before slipping on his shoes and slipping out the door.

She watched the door latch shut before picking up the business card. It was all in Japanese, but there was a caduceus symbol in the corner. _Did he work in the medical field?_ She ran her thumb over the snakes. And a phone number at the bottom.

 _What have I gotten myself into with you?_


	2. Chapter 2

**I am a little surprised that there are readers here for fanfictions of this show. Like, it seems like one of those niche things, like toaster fetishes or Rush Limbaugh. But I mean, if you keep reviewing, I'll keep posting chapters. Fair?**

* * *

Naoki stepped out of his shoes and threw his keys onto the table next to the entryway. His small apartment looked like someone had flipped it upside-down and then flipped it right side up again. Papers of medical journals and case studies, empty food containers, old clothes, empty pill bottles, and half-empty cans of beer littered every square surface. It was laughable to Naoki that he had such a neat place, it could've been a picture in a furniture catalog, only a year ago. Now he couldn't be bothered. What was the point wasting time cleaning? It would only get messy again.

He pushed his outfit from yesterday off of his bed and onto the floor and laid down on his stomach. His mother had moved him into here a month or two after That Day. " _You can't stay in that big house all by yourself."_ She had said. _"The ghosts will drive you crazy."_

He didn't have the heart to tell her that he was already crazy.

His cellphone and pager sat on top of flipped over container of instant ramen on the bedside table. He almost never left home without them, but he conceded that this afternoon was an exception. He checked each one, the pager first. Nothing. And then his cellphone. Two missed calls from his mother.

He rolled the opposite direction, his knee aching with the motion. He was exhausted, his shoulders sore and back bruised from the fall over the railing. But he wondered if he was going to be able to get any sleep tonight.

 _You don't deserve to sleep._

Perhaps not.

 _You don't deserve to live._

No.

 _You know what you did._

The malicious, evil voice in the back of mind started. It was Naoki's constant companion nowadays, rehashing all of his sins over and over, for every waking moment of his being. It whispered, like it was telling him a secret, but it was so loud that sometimes he couldn't hear other people talking to him. All he heard was the voice, telling him that his suffering was all of his fault.

Naoki rolled back over in his bed and reached for the pills that sat just out of reach. He told a colleague of his that he had a hard time getting to sleep after a wild shift, so naturally he was prescribed a sleeping medication. What he didn't tell his colleague that his preferred way of taking his sleeping pills was to chase it with beer. It was the only way to numb himself from the voice that haunted him.

That was the beginning, then just the pills stopped working until he doubled and then tripled the dose, or mixed them with liquor, or took them and then cut. Each time the voice was subdued and then came back, whispering that the only way he was going to get rid of it was to end it completely.

He rolled into a sitting position and popped a handful of the white pills and chased them with the cold leftover coffee from this morning. He pushed up the sleeves of his cardigan and inspected his wrists. Lines of self-inflicted scars were starting to fade. At first he was very careful, only getting nooks of his elbows, since he could hide those from others with his lab coat. But now, he didn't care. He cut to distract himself from the pain of the voice in his head. He cut to feel in control, even if just for a second. He cut because he could sleep afterwards.

 _You don't deserve to sleep._

 _No._ He agreed as he reached for a scalpel he swiped from the hospital. _But that American girl wouldn't let me die. And sleep is the closest I can get to death._

* * *

Kotoko finished up dishes and started clicking off lights, tucking her small, but neat house in for the night. With every light she clicked off, she said one thing she was thankful for. She had a lot to be thankful for and a lot of lights to turn off, so she combined the two. The kitchen light: her life. The dining room light: Naoki. The reading lamp over Naoki's chair: her family. The living room light: her marriage. The nursery light: Kotomi. When Irie-kun heard her chant her little ritual as she moved from room to room, he would come from his study to help put Kotomi to bed.

She went to click off Naoki's reading light when she noticed something out of the ordinary. Irie-kun laid with Kotomi on his chest, a medical journal on his lap as he dozed.

"Irie-kun." She whispered, since the baby was sleeping. His chin dipped, but then he suddenly straightened up at Kotoko's voice. "Why are you out here with Kotomi?"

"She was fussing." He answered, his voice heavy with sleep.

"Do you want me to put her to bed?"

He shook his head. "No, you go on ahead. I am going to stay out here with her a little longer, I think."

Kotoko leaned over and kissed Naoki on his forehead. "I am thankful for my family." She said and kissed her daughter on her head. "Goodnight, Irie-kun."

"Goodnight, Kotoko."

She clicked off the nursery light, but left the one in the hallway on, so that Naoki could find his way to bed in the dark. She fell asleep in an empty bed, but knew that Irie-kun would come in soon and kiss her on her forehead before getting into bed himself.

There was a shout from the living room that startled Kotoko awake.

"Kotomi!" The scream rang high in Kotoko's ears and a knot of panic settled in under her ribs. She tore from the bedroom in a full run, turning on every single light that she had just turned off only hours before.

Irie-kun was kneeling on the floor in front of his chair, his mouth pressed over his daughter's face as tears streamed down his cheeks. She had never seen him like this. Desperate, panicked, distressed.

"What happened?" Kotoko forced the words out, but they felt odd and foreign in her mouth. She fell to her knees in front of her husband, who offered the baby to her.

"I fell asleep," He whimpered. "And when I woke up, she wasn't breathing, Kotoko. I was only asleep for an hour."

Kotoko gently lifted the baby from Naoki's arms. The normal pink in the curve of her lip and high-points on her cheeks were now a cool blue and she was icy to the touch. Instead of panicking, which Kotoko fought with every fiber of her being, she let her nursing training take over and gently laid her daughter on the floor's surface and started performing infant CPR on her. "Naoki." She said quietly, trying to get her sobbing husband's attention.

"It was for a couple of minutes, only a couple of minutes..." He breathed in between ragged sobs.

It unnerved Kotoko seeing Naoki like this. He was always so calm and in control. At home, in public, even at the hospital. He was the voice of reason when Kotoko felt like she was going to lose it. It was completely out of the ordinary for him to freak out like he was, but Kotoko could see him visibly shaking in the shadow of his chair. "Naoki!" She said again, more firmly this time as she pressed small beats with her fingers onto her daughter's chest. He stopped and looked at her, waiting for her guidance.

"We need an ambulance." She ordered with quiet authority, like a father to his child. Like a _doctor_ to his _nurse_. "We need to get her to the hospital."

* * *

Reagan woke after a fitful night of rest and rolled her white duvet around her shoulders into a blanket cocoon. She knew all of the advice on sleeping with the lights when you have to adjust to time zones so that your circadian rhythm can adjust, but she was sure that jet lag wasn't the only thing keeping her awake.

In the hospital, suicidal patients were placed on a 24-hour watch, and then reevaluated. She was sure that that man wasn't even evaluated in the first place. He needed psychological care. He needed to be admitted and placed on medications. He needed to have someone tell him that suicide wasn't the answer. It was just an ending to a sentence that was way too short.

She rolled over and checked the time on her nightstand. It was 5:21 am. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and pulled it off of its charge cord and grabbed the business card that sat next to it.

"I'm just making sure you're okay." She said to herself as she listened ringing of the other line, knots in her stomach making her feel ill. "I'm just making sure you're okay."

 _"Hai,"_ A sleepy voice said. _"Kore-,"_

"Naoki," She breathed with relief. "I mean, Irie-kun. Sorry. I'm glad-,"

"Don't call me that." He said. "Please, don't call me that."

"I'm sorry." Reagan said. "I'm just calling to make sure-,"

"That I didn't kill myself in the middle of the night?" He finished for her. "Well, I didn't. You don't have to worry about me anymore." The line went dead and Reagan pulled her phone away to see the screen darken.

She placed her phone on the bed. She thought about calling him again, but who was to say that he would answer? She had finished her job of making sure that he survived. But, she knew that she wouldn't be satisfied unless he got some serious professional help.

That was just the doctor in her.

But, at this point, she couldn't worry about Naoki now. She had been sent to Tokyo for a reason. And that obligation was bigger than a random man.

She rolled out of bed got ready for the day, dressing herself in a bright red pencil skirt and matching blazer. She flipped on the television as she was brushing her teeth and pulling her mane of hair through a brush before gathering it all up in a bun onto the top of her head.

She was rolling on her stockings before a familiar number flashed across her phone. She grabbed it and answered it. "Moshi moshi."

"One day in and you're already fluent." Thomas, Reagan's boyfriend laughed on the other line. Reagan could almost see him driving in Mercedes-Benz, talking into the handless speakerphone of his car while he weaved through LA traffic.

"Did you know," She started without acknowledging his teasing. "That the Japanese have, like, four different ways of answering a phone?"

"Only to keep you on your toes." Thomas said. "How has your first day been?"

 _Oh, pretty good. I saved a guy from offing himself off of a bridge. No biggie._ "Not too bad. I only got lost twice. How's the practice?"

"Pretty boring, actually." Thomas answered. "I think Charles and I are going to have an early day today and try to get 18 in before the sun goes down."

"Don't have too much fun." Reagan said as she turned off the TV and went back into the bedroom to find her nice pumps.

"Without you? Never." He said. "Gotta go, babe. Love you."

"Love you too."

She threw her phone on the side table so she could fix herself some coffee before heading out, but something caught her eye. She picked up Naoki's business card and ran her thumb against the embossed characters. _I shouldn't._ She thought. _He's not my responsibility._

Then why did it feel like he was?

* * *

Naoki pressed his hot cup of coffee to his cheek to bring the feeling back into his face. His phone ringtone startled him out of his drug-induced sleep, but it was just the girl from yesterday. He was unnecessarily rough with her. He knew that she was only trying to be kind, but he was in no mood to play the game of pleasantries with a complete stranger that talked like she belonged in a Wild West saloon in a corset, serving beers to cowboys. He found a pair of pants that were still sort of clean and a shirt that didn't need to be pressed and rummaged in his sock drawer for a tie.

He inspected himself in the mirror of his bathroom, the circles underneath his eyes were dark and purple like bruises and he looked gaunt, but nobody noticed but him. Well, and his mother. If they did, they would just assume that he was occupied in his work, like a typical genius, forgetting about food or self-care in pursuit of the greater good for humanity. He had a reason too, right? It was all he had left. How surprised they would look if they found out he was a suicidal, pill-popping, self-mutilating basket case.

He almost laughed at loud at that thought.

 _Are you going to keep lying to them?_

He watched his reflection wince at the voice. "If it keeps them happy." He answered out loud to himself.

 _Kotoko lied to you._

The stab of betrayal underneath his ribcage made him audibly gasp with pain and he doubled over his sink and tried to catch his breath. He could seek help. He had thought about it before, what it would be like to confess everything. Lay out all of his feelings. He'd probably be hospitalized and his mother would demand that he came home. His father might even take time off of work. They'd have to explain what was going on to Yuki, as if he couldn't figure it out himself. They would treat him like a kid again. _But, honestly, would it be that bad?_

 _Would you want to place that on the people you love?_

 _You know it would be easier just to disappear._

He gripped the porcelain of the sink and focused on breathing. His thoughts went back to what that American girl said. _"You told me you weren't going to make it my responsibility. So, I'm doing that myself."_ His parents would help him if he asked. But, he couldn't do it. He couldn't let them suffer on his behalf. Everything that has happened has been his fault. It was all his fault.

 _You don't deserve the attention._

 _No._ He agreed. _I don't._


	3. Chapter 3

Reagan was kicking herself for not wearing flats as she was led through almost every hallway of this massive hospital by the old-as-dirt Chief of Staff and her interpreter. She knew they were doing it to be polite and Reagan _was_ genuinely curious in the Japanese healthcare system, but towards the end she just wanted to collapse. Or put on slippers. Or both.

Chief Ozamaku chatted in Japanese, his hands clasped behind his back. Reagan envied him as she walked a couple paces behind him. He was wearing tennis shoes along with his trousers and lab coat.

"Are you named after the late President Reagan, Dr. Dunn?" The interpreter asked when the Chief was finished speaking.

Reagan was so captivated and jealous by the Chief's shoes that she missed the question the first time. She started and blinked at her interpreter, a young man that turned her first name from two syllables to three by inserting an unnecessary 'u' in the middle. "Excuse me?"

The interpreter flushed red. "The President Reagan?"

"Oh," Reagan smiled. "No, I'm named after the character from the _Exorcist."_

The interpreter flushed red again, but translated what Reagan had said and the Chief turned around in confusion.

Reagan blushed at all the sudden attention. That was a bit of trivia that she liked to pull out with new friends over drinks, not with the Chief of Staff of one of the biggest hospitals in Tokyo. "My father loves horror movies and he always liked the name."

The Chief smiled politely when the interpreter relied what she had said and continued walking down the hallway. Reagan rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She should've just said she was named after the president and saved herself the awkward moment of realizing that the already low opinion of the female, American doctor was bottoming out.

"We would like to show you the surgical department." The interpreted said a beat after Chief Ozamaku. "And introduce you to the staff you will be working with."

Reagan watched with surprise as the chief and the interpreter both picked up the pace towards a different wing. The hallways and floors got white and more sterile-looking and Reagan began to feel more and more at home. She loved the smells and the chaos and the sense of urgency and importance of a surgical department.

"The doctor you will be working with the closest is absolutely brilliant." The interpreter translated. "He's young, like you, but has a lot of potential in this new generation of medicine."

"I'm happy to working so closely with doctors that are so passionate in their fields." Reagan smiled, hoping that would win her some points back.

The Chief burst through the doorways into a large conference room. Doctors of all ages and shapes and sizes sat around in their lab coats, chatting or reading. One even had his feet on the conference table. He barked something in Japanese and they all rose to their feet.

"Doctors, this is Dr. Reagan Dunn, M.D., Ph.D. She completed her residency at UCLA Medical Center. She has three papers published on the subject of neurology, radiology, and neo-natal neurology and is already an accomplished neurological surgeon at her young age. She has been invited to teach you deep hypothermic circulatory arrest over the next couple of months so that it can be utilized in your own surgeries. This is Sazuki-san, her interpreter." The interpreter said for the Chief. "Please give Dr. Dunn your utmost respect and attention."

"Hai," Most of them answered back.

Reagan smiled politely at the group of doctors who all mostly stood and bowed. Her eyes came to rest on a particular face, his hair was smoothed down now and he was in a lab coat, but Naoki was standing there, looking almost out of place in the group of doctors. A million questions ran through her head. _That man was a doctor? Did they know about him? Did they know what happened to him?_ She tried to hide her surprise and instead focused on the stream of bodies who were shaking her hand and introducing themselves.

"Dr. Dunn," Sazuki-san pulled Dr. Dunn away from the crowd and she was led to stand in front of Naoki with the Chief. "This is Dr. Irie, he is going to be working the closest with you since your treatment will be the most helpful for his clinical studies." Sazuki-san blushed red. "He also is the best at English."

Reagan met eyes with Naoki. His expression was set and steel, robotic, but also visibly annoyed at her presence. She smiled and made a short bow. "I look forward to working with you, Dr. Irie."

"Likewise." He bowed as well, but kept his eyes steeled on her.

* * *

Naoki rubbed his own shoulders as he walked down the hallway of the surgical ward. Of course it would be his luck that he American girl would show up at his only place of solace. The hospital was the only place he could work in peace. The operating room was the only other place where he felt in control.

He regretted not taking the plunge yesterday. It meant that he had to wake up and deal with the fact that he was going to not be working closely, for God knows how long, with this girl who knew what he was struggling with.

This girl that reminded him so much of…

"Shit," He muttered to himself.

"Dr. Irie," Her chipper voice, with that accent, said as she fell into pace next him, her high-heels clicking on the floor. "I wanted to give you my notes from the last trials with DHCA. The Chief said that you were working to find a treatment for arteriovenous malformations presented at birth and I think-,"

Naoki grabbed the girl by the wrist and pulled her into a supply closet, the automatic light sensor catching their movements and turning the lights on. "What are you doing here?" He growled at her.

Her wild hair had been secured to her head in a bun and she was wearing makeup today, her eyelashes long and dark around her eyes the color of spring grass. They flashed angrily at him. But there was something else too. _Relief?_ "You know why I am here." She jerked her arm from his grasp. He didn't even realize that he was still holding it. "Better question is, _why_ are you here?"  
He felt anger in his chest pop like a fireworks show. "I don't have to answer that."

She crossed her arms over the stack of manila folders at her chest. "You would if I told the Chief that your idea of Tuesday afternoon is to off yourself in a river."

He recoiled. If she did that, then he would have to confess everything. He would lose his place as a doctor. He would be sent home. He would lose his sanctuary, his place of peace. The hospital was the only thing he had left and now it she was dangling it front of him, threatening to take it away.

She must have read his look of terror, as her expression softened. "I won't do that." She said. "As long as you don't give me cause to."

"Don't worry," He challenged. "I won't."

"Good." She nodded and presented the folders. "These are my notes. Read them. Tomorrow we will start practicing with the simulation." She turned and started to leave. "Also, Dr. Irie, I am a world-class surgeon with a Doctorate from Yale and a Ph.D from Berkeley. Please don't pull me into random supply closets." A wicked, playful smile grew over her face and her eyes flashed mischievously. "I have a reputation to uphold."

Naoki watched her leave and sighed against the shelves of gauze and packages of butterfly needles once she was gone. That girl was going to make his life hell more than it already was.

* * *

The doctor was talking medical jargon with Irie-kun that flew so far over Kotoko's head, it could've landed on the moon. She didn't really care though. It wasn't like she could hear over the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. She had taken to watching Naoki, who had calmed down to the point of passiveness as he listened to the doctor explain slowly and deliberately what had happened to Kotomi.

The ambulance had come and taken Kotomi to the hospital and they had arrived, still in pajamas and wet hair shortly after. It wasn't the same hospital that her or Naoki worked at. That hospital's pediatric care unit was full. They didn't know them here. Kotoko couldn't decide if that was a blessing or not. On one had, they probably could've followed their daughter as they tried to save her. On the other hand, this meant that Naoki didn't have to be a doctor tonight. He could just be a terrified father.

"They should let us in." Naoki was pacing like a caged animal in front of Kotoko who sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap. It was almost comical how severely their roles had switched. She felt like freaking out, panicking, making a scene like Naoki was. That's what she would've done normally. But if she did that, who would be the rock to hold onto if the storm got too bad? That was Naoki's job, usually and it didn't seem like he was up to the task tonight. "We should see if she is okay. I am a doctor!" He slammed his fist against the wall and Kotoko gave a silent 'thank you' that the waiting room was empty tonight. He came and sunk down next to Kotoko. "It was only for an hour. I only fell asleep for an hour."

"Irie-kun," Kotoko took his hand and laced her fingers through his. "It's not your fault."

He looked at her hard, his face red and puffy from crying. "What's wrong with you?" He asked. "Aren't you scared?"

 _Absolutely terrified._ "There is no use in panicking." She answered. "We just have to wait and pray that it's nothing serious."

Now they both sat in the doctor's office, rooted in their seats like old trees. Kotoko was catching words like "hemorrhage" and "brain." But she let the words float around her like bubbles. It wasn't until "death" was mentioned that she came back to reality.

"What?" She interrupted. She looked at Naoki, but he just stared at the floor, silent tears rolling off of his face.

"I'm sorry," The doctor held an empathetic gaze as he repeated himself. "A arterial hemorrhage in Kotomi-sans' brain caused her nervous system to shut down and for her to stop breathing." He took a short breath in. "She probably passed while sleeping on Irie-kun's shoulder."

"What?" The words that were spoken to her didn't seem real. Kotomi couldn't be dead. She had just gotten her diaper changed three hours ago. Kotoko was just rocking her and singing silly songs to her before dinner. This morning she was wearing two different shades of pink socks and she laughed while she told Naoki that she had pulled one of them off. Like she knew they didn't match. She had just kissed this little bald patch on the back while she told her good night. This wasn't right. Kotomi was very much alive.

"I'm sure this is a lot to process." The doctor gave a deep bow. "I have a nurse escort you to the nursery so you can say goodbye."

"Doctor," Kotoko was as surprised as the doctor at Naoki, who was looking up at him, his eyes full of pain. "If I had been awake, If I had been awake when she stopped breathing, would she have lived?"

"Irie-kun…" Kotoko started feeling the knot of tears in her chest and could feel them hot on her face, but was waved off by Naoki.

Kotoko saw the lines around the doctor's eyes tighten. "It's hard to say for sure, but early intervention would have given her a better chance."

"Irie-kun this isn't your-,"

"Thank you, Doctor." Naoki's gaze fell to the floor, and Kotoko watched him catch tears in the palm of his hand.

The doctor bowed again. "Please, don't blame yourself. This could've happened at anytime and-,"

"I said 'thank you,'" Naoki looked up with a hard gaze. "We would like to see Kotomi now."

* * *

Naoki pulled off his lab coat and hung it on the back of his chair and opened his briefcase on his desk. He started placing his notes to go over and medical journals and uncovered the manila folders of information that Reagan had given him. He flipped open the top one and started scanning her notes.

He fell into his chair as he engrossed himself in Regan's research, his eyes darting over the words as he committed them to memory instantly.

"Irie-san," He was interrupted by a colleague at his door, Hatsumoto-san, who could've been a pretty good surgeon if he figured out how to keep his bottle-thick glasses on his face. "Some of us are going out for a drink and want to know if you want to come."

Naoki could feel his lip curl in a slight sneer. "You have never invited me out before."

The doctor coughed nervously "We weren't sure since…" He coughed again. "But it's been-,"

Naoki dropped his gaze back on Reagan's notes. "No."

"Oh," The doctor coughed again. "I'm sorry if it's still a sore-,"

"Goodbye, Hatsumoto-san."

Instead of leaving, Naoki's colleague entered Naoki's office without permission. "Are those the American girl's notes on DHCA?" Hatsumoto got behind Naoki to look over his shoulder. Naoki knew he couldn't read it since it was in English anyway and just felt irritated at Hatsumoto for invading his space. "I heard that DHCA has only been performed successful sixteen times and nine of those times were by Dr. Dunn."

"Captivating." Naoki turned his shoulder so that he was blocking Hatsumoto's view.

"I'm so jealous that you get to work so close to her." Hatsumoto breathed. "I would've studied harder in English if I knew that I would have a chance to work so close with someone as pretty as-," Hatsumoto fell silent and gave another irritating nervous cough. "I'm sorry, Irie-san. I'm being insensi-,"

"I'm leaving." Naoki pressed his chair back, making Hatsumoto jump back to avoid getting hit. He flipped the folder close and stuffed it in his briefcase. He told himself that he was going to read it when he got back to his apartment, although he knew, deep down, that was a lie. He was going to eat reheated leftovers and probably drink himself asleep soon after.

He turned to Hatsumoto who was still standing behind his desk, a dumb, baffled expression on his face. "Turn off the light when you're finished." He said before turning and heading for the elevator.


	4. Chapter 4

Reagan breathed in through her nostrils and out through her mouth at the crowd of people watching her on stage of the auditorium they were in. She would rather do a corpus callosotomy blindfolded than public speaking. And doing it in front of a group of doctors, that was even worse. Doctors were the worst critics. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and channeled Carrie Underwood and tried to calm her nerves. _Jesus, take the wheel…_

She turned back to the crowd and managed to spot Dr. Irie slip in at the last moment. He was thin to the point of malnourishment and his steeled, blank eyes made him look robotic, but he was cute otherwise and she'd bet the whole herd that he was really attractive before whatever happened to him. _What in the world happened to you, Naoki?_

She gripped the little podium she was standing at with one hand and the slideshow clicker with her other. Kazuki-san stood towards her right, waiting to translate her words for the crowd. _Alright, deep breath…_

"As you all know, deep hypothermic circulatory arrest is a procedure where the patient is cooled to below twenty degrees to stop brain function and blood circulation for a short amount of time." She started, letting her voice carry to the back of the room. "Applications of DHCA include repairs of the aortic arch, repairs to head and neck great vessels, repair of large cerebral aneurysms, pulmonary thromboendarterectomy, and repair of cerebral arteriovenous malformations…" She paused to let Kazuki-san catch up. "I am here because I have not only successfully performed DCHA a total of nine times, but two of those times were performed on an infant younger than one, and three of those times I successfully lowered the body temperature to fourteen degrees, allowing a full ninety minutes of clinical death."

As she talked she let her gaze circulate the group in front of her. She didn't want to keep them too long. She knew herself that doctors got antsy if she was away from patients for too long. But they were all tracking with her. Except for one, who was sleeping on his hand. She sighed a little internally. Dr. Irie was not going to make her trip out here easy, that was for sure.

"Who can tell me the end goal of DHCA?" She let Kazuki-san finish her question before she pretended to scan the room. "Dr. Irie!"

" _Cooling continues until the brain is also inactivated by cold, and electrocerebral silence or flatline EEG is attained. The blood pump is then switched off, and the interval of circulatory arrest begins."_ Dr. Irie said without even opening his eyes. He then said it again in Japanese.

Reagan felt her jaw drop open a little bit. That was word for word out of her notes she gave him yesterday. And it was on the bottom of a paper she wrote that she threw in the back of one. That meant that Naoki had read _all_ of her notes. In a day. Six years of work. In an evening. But she couldn't be fully mad at him. She was also impressed. She wondered how he was over a surgical table. It was possible for doctors to be book smart but implode under pressure. Was he going to pass with flying colors when he is only given an hour tops to resect a brain hemorrhage or repair an artery? Only to then quickly bring up the temperature in the patient to avoid hypothermia?

She almost salivated at the thought of finding out. "Very good, Dr. Irie."

Dr. Irie was not going to make her trip out here easy, but she was safe in saying that he was going to make it _very_ interesting.

* * *

Naoki moved with the rest of the group of doctors into an empty operating room once Reagan was finished going over the procedure on how to perform DHCA. He leaned against the wall and tried to make himself look aloof and not obvious that he was nursing a hangover. His head pounded right behind his eyes that made him wince with every beat. He was having a hard time keeping up with Reagan's interpreter, let alone Reagan herself, as she chattered in the middle of the operating room.

He had gone home yesterday and read through all of Reagan's notes in a six hour sitting. They had consumed him. Which was odd, since he hadn't held any interest in anything really in so long. It was different, feeling that that familiar need to learn and consume knowledge. And he had come to two conclusions: The first was that Reagan was unorthodox. Her methodology spanned beyond normal medicine. She thought outside of the box, like using ice cream to diagnose a brain aneurysm or using intervalled barbiturates to figure out the source of a seizure pattern, and that's why she was so successful at DHCA, since the procedure, in and of itself, was unorthodox. The second was that she was absolutely brilliant.

But she would never here that from Naoki.

She looked so small and petite standing next to the group of male doctors, like a child playing dress up. She held herself high, trying to make herself seem bigger than she was, reflexively holding her chin up and her shoulders back. She wasn't wearing a lab coat, but she was wearing the uniform green scrubs that marked her as a surgeon, her hands in the front pockets as animatedly she moved around the dummy laying on the table.

She turned and touched a finger to her chin, her eyes drifting to the ceiling like she was trying to decide something. She only held it for a second before dropping her hand and moving back around the table. _Kotoko made that face all the time._ It felt like a punch to the gut and it took all of Naoki's willpower not to audibly gasp aloud out of pain.

 _Your fault._

 _Everything is your fault._

 _Everything._

Naoki took a silent deep breath, the sharp knife of grief and guilt twisting in his stomach. He was panicking. He knew what a panic attack was. He could catalog the symptoms, list them off as he experienced them: heart palpitations, chest pain, difficulty breathing, dizziness, and chills. He could recite, word-for-word out of the DSM-5 the definition of a panic attack from memory.

It didn't make them any easier though.

Naoki looked around at the faces as they started to blur together. They were all captivated by Reagan, and not paying attention to him at all. Logically, Naoki saw that. It didn't stop the feeling that they were way too close and that the caving walls were only making them closer.

Without thinking about it, he made his way towards the door of the operating room, desperate for air.

"Dr. Irie!" He heard Reagan call his name but he didn't stop moving. He couldn't.

 _Everything is your fault._

* * *

Reagan watched Dr. Irie all of a sudden run out the door. A knot of worry dropped in her stomach and she had half a mind to run after him. But she thought about the sheer terror in his eyes when she threatened to tell the Chief about the other day, and that kept her frozen in front of the other doctors that looked about as confused as she was. _What would happen, though, if they found out? Would he lose his job because he's sick? Is that even legal?_ She couldn't get that look he gave out of her head. The hospital was all he had left, she understood that now. She hoped, silently, that it wasn't anything serious. She was unsure how many times she would be successful at talking him down from the edge of a bridge.

 _It's not your responsibility, though._ She reminded herself. Perhaps not personally. But, he technically was her student now. At least, for the next couple of months.

Reagan jammed her fists in the front pockets of her scrubs. A quiet, but steady murmur of speculation and gossip rose from the small crowd in front of her. She put on a big smile. "Why don't we take a break?" She suggested and as soon as Kazuki finished translating for her, the doctors turned and filed out of the operating room.

Reagan turned to Kazuki, who loyally stood next to her, watching the others walk out. "You can go too, Kazuki-san." She smiled at him.

"Are you sure, Dr. Dunn?" He said, his tousled reddish hair shining underneath the large central light. "I can stay with you."

She waved him off. "I think I can manage a vending machine without a translator. You go get something to eat."

He made a short bow and headed for the door with a short, but grateful "Thank you."

Reagan followed after a counting to sixty, and maneuvered her way around the large surgical unit. Now that it was mid-afternoon, the hallway was bustling with nurses pushing beds and wheelchairs, conversations between family members in the hallway, and doctors moving from recovery room to recovery room, checking on patients.

She wandered around the halls, her hands in her pockets, as she peaked in offices. She wasn't sure why she was trying to find him. She just had this troubling feeling that he was in worse shape than he seemed.

She finally found Naoki at foot of a large, but empty staircase, his back to her, one hand pressed against the wall. "Dr. Irie," She started as she approached him. "Are you okay?"

He didn't answer, but Reagan could see his scapulae through his lab coat contract with heavy breaths. _What has the world done to you?_

"Dr. Irie?" She started again, arching around him to see his face. "Naoki?"

"I'm fine." He clipped suddenly, as Reagan moved in front of him. "I'm sorry I left the class." His eyes were pitched sideways, but Reagan could see tears in his eyelashes. "It will not happen again."

Reagan looked at this man who stood two heads taller than her. "Are you sure?" For a split second she thought she saw something in his eyes. _Hesitation? Uncertainty?_ She thought back to him on the bridge, the deep desolation in his eyes. _I feel like I am drowning and I can't find which way is up._

"Are you going to tell the Chief?" His eyes moved to something above her head.

Reagan was confused for a second and then recalled their conversation yesterday in the supply closet. "You haven't given me a reason to." She shrugged. "For all I know, you ate something that didn't agree with you."

A small smile crossed his lips and he seemed to relax in his shoulders. "I read your notes you gave me yesterday."

"Oh, yeah?" She rolled her eyes and met his challenging smile. "What did you think?"

His eyes came to rest on her. "There's more to you than meets the eye, Dr. Dunn."

* * *

 **Me watching the first episode of the 2nd season:**

 **beginning: what the fuck you fucking emotionally constipated fuck mothering broken toaster what the fuck i will end you with a dirty KFC spork you have the personality of a mcdonalds chicken nugget that's been run over by a fedex truck i hate u so much**

 **end: awwww they're so cute together they were meant for each other i love this show fuck my emotions up ~~~ (ó ꒳ ò✿)**

 **review if same**


	5. Chapter 5

**Thank you all four and a half regular readers, your reviews are most amazing**

* * *

"What in tarnation?" An all too familiar accent rang in Naoki's ears. He turned the corner to see Reagan struggling with a vending machine. They had finished the DHCA lesson for that day and Naoki contemplated trying to get on the board for a surgery, but the panic attack earlier left him pent up and shaky. He went down to the hospital cafeteria for some coffee to take back up to his office, but now seeing Reagan, he just wanted to about-face and leave.

Twice now, Reagan had cornered him at his weakest. In the year and a half that everything has started happening, the only other person to ask him if he was okay was his mother. Twice now, she seen the cracks he tried so hard to cover up. Twice now, he put his position as a doctor in jeopardy.

He was not going to risk a third time.

He watched her for a second, just out of her view, for the sheer comedy of her pressing random buttons, the vending machine yelling at her in robotic Japanese, and then her sticking her hand in the cubby where the soup drops. She pursed her lips, her eyes wide with frustration and anger. She resorted to clubbing it with a fist, which finally made the soup pour out. She laughed and squealed as she watched the soup dispense, pointing it out to random people that walked by.

Naoki found himself snickering from his hiding place. The snickering turned into full-on laughing and he pressed tears out of his eyes with the back of hand. He used to love to watch all the faces Kotoko would make when she would struggle with something simple. The way she used to pep-talk or sing or cheer herself on through stuff. The sheer joy in her large eyes when she would finally get it.

 _Kotoko._

A million pounds of weight fell heavy on Naoki's chest. He didn't feel like food or coffee anymore. He felt like crawling into bed and forgetting that the last year and half never happened. He felt like sleeping for a millennium. He felt like shooting himself in the head.

He turned and headed back upstairs towards his office. Maybe he could slip out without anyone noticing. He was halfway to his destination when something buzzed in his pocket. He pulled out his pager. Nothing. He then pulled out his cell phone.

 _Mom._ Flashed across the screen. He sighed and stopped on the landing between the first and the second floor. He thought about silencing it, which is what he usually did, but hesitated. He couldn't actually remember the last time he talked to his mother. And he remember everything.

"Hai," He answered the phone.

"Onii-chan!" She squawked on the other line and Naoki had to hold the phone away from his face for a second. "Onii-chan, why don't you ever answer your phone?"

"I'm answering it right now." He countered.

"Perhaps that is right." She made a noise. "Is everything alright? Papa and I worry about you! We never see you anymore and with Koto-,"

"Enough," He interrupted. "I'm twenty-eight years old. You don't need to worry about me."

She made another noise. "Can you visit your old parents sometimes then? How about coming over for dinner next week?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Going over to his parents' house sounded about as fun as a root canal. He hated the way his father asked if he was eating enough or the sad look in his mother's eyes when she greeted him. It was like they could tell he was fading away, but were doing nothing to stop it. And then the house itself. Everywhere he turned he could see Kotoko, standing in the kitchen or sitting at the table or waiting for him at the base of the stairs. If only his mother knew what home visits did to him. "I don't know. I am swamped at work…"

"Please, Onii-chan! Yuki misses you! He's been so withdrawn lately without you. I know a visit will cheer him right up."

Naoki and his mother were on completely different planets when it came to interests and personality, but she knew exactly where to get him. "Okay, I'll come for dinner."

"Great! Let's say, next Friday at seven!" She sang. "See you then. Love you, Onii-chan."

"Love you too."

He sighed against the railing of the landing and watched his phone screen darken before slipping it into the pocket of his lab coat.

How could this day get any worse?

* * *

Kotoko followed the others into a small, private room that was empty except for a cold metal crib in the middle. Nothing seemed real. Everything was splotchy and fuzzy. She felt like she was walking on a treadmill, going forwards but not getting anywhere. It was a nightmare, she was convinced. She was going to wake up next to Naoki and look over to see Kotomi sleeping soundly on the baby monitor. Or maybe her alarm will wake her up and she will start breakfast. Or maybe the baby will cry because she's hungry and Naoki will touch her head and tell her that he will go feed her this time.

She just needed to wake up and this horrible night will be over.

Naoki moved to the far side of the crib, tears falling down his face. _Don't cry, Irie-kun._ She wanted to say. _This is a dream. All of it. Kotomi is fine._

The floor didn't even look real, the tile pattern swirling like it was alive. She looked down and almost fell over at the illusion. She wasn't even aware that she was moving, but before she knew it, she was standing over her baby.

Giving birth to Kotomi was challenging to say the least. She was early by a little over a month and forced Kotoko into a thirty-two hour labor that ended up in a cesarean-section anyway. She wanted to scream and shout and bawl and rip Irie-kun's arm off of his torso all at the same time. By the end she was exhausted and feverish and a little delusional. Irie-kun had told her that she threatened him with divorce for "doing this to her." But at the end, when Kotomi laid in her crib, her face peaceful and eyelids fluttering, all she felt was warmth.

Now all Kotoko felt was cold.

Kotomi laid so still. There was no movement of her fingers or toes or eyelashes as they fluttered with her sweet baby dreams. She didn't stir or cry or hiccup or smile. She was as still as stone. Kotoko reached out and touched her feather-soft hair. Instead of warmth there was only cold.

"I'm sorry," Irie-kun said sudden, his voice breaking with tears. Kotoko didn't look up though. She couldn't. She couldn't bear to see Irie-kun hurting as much as he did. "I'm so sorry."

Kotoko ran her fingers from her daughter's hair, down her arm, to her tiny toes. The realization that this wasn't a dream made her feel like a mirror shattering, a sink overflowing. She wasn't going to wake up to her husband bouncing their baby around their bedroom, a towel on his shoulder as he tried to get her to burp. She wasn't going to ever hold her or watch her smile or hear her little squeals.

"Irie-kun." She started, feeling like a piece of her wilting as she rounded out the words. "Our daughter is dead."

* * *

"What are you eating?" Thomas asked, his face filling up Reagan's phone screen as they talked on FaceTime. After winning the battle royale with the vending machine, she went back to the quiet flight of steps she found Naoki at to eat her lunch. At the same moment that she decided to dig in to the beefy-smelling broth and noodles, her phone chirped.

She stared at the contents of her soup. She recognized leeks and tofu, but beyond that, she wasn't so sure. "It's a soup I got from a vending machine."

Thomas made a face of disgust, his icy-blue eyes sparkling. "Reagan, please. You aren't really going to eat that."

At the moment that Thomas asked that, her stomach growled. Mystery Soup or not, she was definitely going to eat it. _But, maybe later._ "What's going on with you?" She asked, lowering the foam bowl out of shot.

Thomas flipped his phone camera so he could pan the beach he was on and then flipped it suddenly back to his face. "Zuma beach." He answered.

"Shouldn't you be working?" She teased, although she was at least, _slightly_ gutted that he was on their favorite beach without her.

"Hey, I did a rhinoplasty this morning." He smiled. Reagan leaned back on on her elbows and watched the wind mess up his wavy brown hair. "It was her fourth one, so I didn't really have to break her nose. I out on the waves by noon."

Reagan let her head fall back. "I miss California already."

"California misses you too, baby." He smiled, but then his eyes darted up to something out of shot. "John's here. Got to go!" He ended the FaceTime before Reagan even had a chance to say 'goodbye.'

She pursed her lips and put her phone on the step her feet were sitting on and picked up her Mystery Soup. She spun her spoon and watched the bits of tofu swirl in the broth and pretended she was watching a rip tide in the Pacific.

* * *

Naoki figured out how to have a worse day.

He flipped his apartment upside-down more than it already was. He was down to his last pill, and was trying to see if he had any leftovers, throwing old, empty pill bottles on his bed as he found them. He had a pile of about a dozen when he stopped and sunk down on his bed, his fingers raking his face. He was in such a hurry to get out that afternoon, that he forgot to pick up a new prescription.

Anxiety spiked loud in his chest and he broke out into a cold sweat. He wasn't going to be able to sleep tonight without them. He rocked a little, trying to will his heartbeat to slow down as he thought of an alternative. He stood up suddenly and stumbled to his small kitchen, putting water on the heat to make tea. Maybe if he drank a little tea, he would calm down enough to sleep.

 _Why are you kidding yourself?_

 _You don't deserve to sleep._

He smashed his fist on the counter. He shouldn't be so weak. Why did he become so weak? He was at the mercy of his own imagination. He was doing this himself. The guilt, the anxiety, the despair. It had been a year and a half, goddamnit, why couldn't he get over it? Why couldn't he just resume life? Why did he have to be tormented like this? What did he do to deserve this?

An infant cry, a hallucination that was probably part withdrawals and part anxiety rang in his ears. He sunk to the ground as his world started to spin, hiding behind his countertop and tried to shut it out. But, it wasn't a sound that could be muffled. It was in his head and it was loud and painful and reverberated in every corner of his mind. "Kotomi," He choked.

 _It's all your fault._

 _Everything is your fault._

He pressed his fingers to the sides of his face and let the guilt beat on him, wave after wave, like he was caught in an undertow. He was drowning, suffocating. All he could do was wait for it to end. Or wait for the dark to take him.

After awhile he couldn't differentiate between his sobs and the ones in his head.

 _It's your fault she's dead._


	6. Chapter 6

Reagan walked around laparoscopy machine that hulked in the center of the room. She had gotten there a little early to prepare and danced a little with excitement to finally be able to see her students' potential. It was almost impossible, unless you had the aptitude to do it. This was a good way to weed out who was even capable of high-pressure brain surgery, since the slightest move could kill someone. IIn fact, one of her own teachers used this method on her when she was in medical school, and she passed so well the first time that her professor came up to her and told her if she didn't go into neurology, she would be a waste of talent.

"Good morning, Dr. Dunn," Kazuki said.

 _"Ohayo gozaimasu."_ She answered back as she centered the petri dish underneath the laparoscopic camera. She had been studying a little Japanese by watching wild and over-the-top game shows in the evening on her apartment's television. Her greeting was met with a small snicker and she looked up at her translator. "Did I not say it right?"

Kazuki eyes widened. "No, no. You did say it right. It's just your _accent."_

She grinned and made a fake sigh, snapping off her gloves. "I guess you can take a girl out of Georgia, but you can't ever take Georgia out of the girl."

At that moment a stream of lab coats filtered into the operation room and fell into a semi-circle around Reagan and the laparoscopy machine. She looked at each one. _Where's Naoki?_ But he slipped in at the last minute. Reagan tried to shake the blossoming feeling of relief in her chest in seeing him. _He was supposed to be here._ She didn't understand why she was so worried that one day he wasn't going to show up.

She tried to shake it and instead turned her attention to the machine. "As you all should probably know, this is a laparoscope, which allows for minimally invasive surgeries." She patted the large camera with her hand like it was a family pet. "It's one of my favorites for doing things like removing hard to reach brain tumors or repairing capillary hemorrhaging. It's a pretty easy machine to get the hang of."

She looked around at the faces watching her. She wondered briefly if they captivation was based on the medicine or the fact that she was a shapely blonde American girl. She sighed a little internally, as she could deduce that it was probably the latter. Oh well, as long as they get _something_ out of her visit here. "However, with DHCA, you only have minutes to complete a procedure before you have to start warming the patient up." She danced around the laparoscope to the controls on the side of the room to turn on the machine. The picture shown brightly on the television screen against the wall. "So, we are going to practice doing very delicate tedious work under an enormous time pressure." She motioned to the picture. "This is an undyed Kevlar thread, one of the thinnest threads in the world and virtually undetectable without coloring, kind of like a busted capillary. I want you, using the laparoscope, find it, tie it into a bow and do it in under two minutes."

There was a murmur that rose from the crowd. Disbelief, she presumed. But, along with the butterflies in her own chest, she hoped that it was also excitement.

"Do I have any volunteers?"

* * *

Reagan was beaming from the inside out, a strobe of passion and happiness, her green eyes flashing mischievously as she called for volunteers. Naoki sighed against his space on the wall. He wished he was capable of getting as excited as her.

"Hai," A colleague to his left puffed out his chest and moved to the middle of the room. Reagan made a big show of the first volunteer, her golden curls bouncing and reflecting the operating room light, and led him over to the controls of the laparoscope.

"Okay," She picked up an egg timer in the shape of a chicken and twisted it. "You have two minutes! Let's see the pretty bow."

Naoki's eyes slid close. His head ached. His eyes ached. His stomach ached. And the insides of his arms felt raw and painful. He managed to get himself calmed down enough after a lot of booze and cutting lacerations onto his own arms. But then again, he didn't really sleep. He had night terrors without the pills. Nightmares. Reliving the moment where he picked up Kotomi off of his shoulder, only to find her limp and lifeless, the realization that she was gone, the moment where Kotoko-,

He pinched the bridge of his nose. What he wouldn't give to go back to the days where the only emotion he felt was slight annoyance at the small, but very loud and shrill girl and her tendencies for making his day harder. Now he felt every emotion all at once, at maximum volume.

The ringing of the timer signaled an end to the two minutes. Naoki opened his eyes to watch his colleague walk back to his place defeated and Reagan try to get another volunteer to come forward.

"If no one volunteers," She warned. "I'll have to start calling on people." She then made a face, it was almost like reading her thoughts in real time, she was so expressive. "I know, the next volunteer to successful tie the Kevlar string will end the class!"

Naoki looked at his watch and had to squint around the pounding in his head to get the numbers to focus. If he could do it in the next two minutes, he would have enough time to get down to the pharmacy before it opened to get his prescription. How hard could it be to tie a piece of string with the laparoscope? He had done much more impressive things with that machine. He sighed and stepped forward. "I volunteer."

* * *

Reagan whipped around to see Naoki stepping through the crowd to the front of the room. A hushed silence fell over the crowd. As he got closer, Reagan could see that he was clammy and pale and he walked with a slight hunch, like everything was painful. She should have sent him out or called a nurse to get him admitted. She should have sent for the Chief. She should have intervened for his sake.

But then she wouldn't get to see if he was capable of doing it. If he was as brilliant as everyone made him out to be.

He sidled over to the controls of the laparoscope, his fingers resting on the triggers and looked up at the television.

"Alright," She said as she twisted her egg timer to the two. "Two minutes starts now!"

Reagan watched Naoki's eyebrows pull together in concentration as he maneuvered the laparoscopes over the Kevlar. He picked up one end, which was now more than the other surgeon could do. He couldn't even find the end of the string in the petri dish, and was reduced to grabbing at nothing, desperately pulling the triggers as he tried to find it against the glass.

She thought she saw something underneath the fluorescent lights of the operating room as Naoki twisted his wrist to move the laparoscope. A slash of red peaking out from underneath his watchband.

Everyone waited with bated breath to see if Dr. Irie could do it. There was a buzz over the other doctors. Reagan crossed her arms and went to stand next to Kazuki as she let the timer continue their ticking.

"Dr. Irie is the most capable doctor in the hospital." Kazuki started without prompting. "He was unprecedented. He was going to be a world class surgeon."

Reagan's head whipped so fast, she actually felt like it spun around, living up to her namesake from the _Exorcist._ Possession wasn't the word she would've used for her feelings at the moment though. More like, extreme curiosity. "He _was?"_

Kazuki glanced down at Reagan, a look crossing his face. All of a sudden the timer buzzed. Everyone looked up at the television to Naoki pulling the end of the Kevlar into a perfect little bow on the petri dish. An audible gasp went out over the crowd.

"I guess the lesson's over." He said in English, his eyes flashing to Reagan and dropped the laparoscope handles.

Everyone started moving to the door, mumbling to each other. Reagan watched Naoki turn and leave the door too, the deep circles underneath his eyes making him look exhausted and pained. She had a sneaking suspicion that there was something else going on, based on the symptoms she was witnessing.

"Dr. Irie," She called and he stopped in his tracks. She bounded up to him. "I'm extremely impressed. I've only ever seen one other person get that on the first try."

He looked down at her, a flash of contempt in his eyes. "Eh?"

"Even feeling under the weather," She said and jammed her fists in her scrub pockets. "You managed to do it."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're ashen." Reagan pointed out. "And perspiring. You look like you're coming down with something." She made a face. "Or coming down _from_ something?"

"It must be the flu." He said as he pulled out his pager from his pocket. "Or maybe I ate something that didn't agree with me." His eyes flashed to her as he threw her own words from the other day back in her face. "I'm needed in the emergency room."

 _Oh no, you're not getting away that easily._


	7. Chapter 7

**I can't tell you what happened to Kotoko upfront. Y'all just need to keep reading to find out. You boarded this emotional rollercoaster with the first page. There's no getting off now. Please keep your hands and feel in the ride at all times.**

* * *

The large emergency room was chaos as patients sat in a neat row in beds, waiting to be seen or was being seen by doctor or being attended to by a nurse. He scanned the area, looking for Dr. Takahashi, who was the physician that paged him.

He found him leaning over a gurney as they moved it through the emergency room to the back and Reagan was already running alongside of them, one hand on the patient. A spark of anger snapped hard in his chest. How was she here already? Why does she have to interfere with everything? Why couldn't she just go away?

He bounded to the gurney and fell in pace with them. The patient was a little boy, no older than six or seven. He was bleeding from the right side of his chest, he could see as Reagan took over keeping pressure on it with gauze from a nurse. "What's going on?"

Dr. Takahashi looked at Reagan and then looked at Naoki. His eyes flashed behind his thin wire-framed glasses. "He and his mother were mugged. He tried to fight them off, and he was stabbed. We have an inch laceration between his sixth and seventh rib." Dr. Takahashi said in good English.

Naoki sighed a little internally. He had wished that the language barrier would keep Reagan off of his patients. He took the chart from Dr. Takahashi to look at his vitals, but as he did that, Reagan automatically shifted the little boy to bring pressure off of his lungs as they moved down the hall. It was automatic, a reflex as easy to her as breathing or blinking.

"We need to get an MRI." Naoki said as he read over and instantly memorized the boy's vitals and statistics.

"There's no time for that." Reagan countered. "It might have gotten to his aorta or his lung. He might be hemorrhaging out. We need to get him to an operating room."

Dr. Takahashi turned to a nurse and told her to reserve an operating room in Japanese. Naoki scowled hard. _He was the one that was paged._ "Are you even allowed to practice in Japan?"

"Yes, matter of fact, I have a provisional license from Prime Minister Abe." She spat back. "I'll give him a call, and we can sit down and have tea together, after _we save this boy's life."_

They both arrived at the operating room at the same time. Naoki ripped off his lab coat and watch and he saw Reagan pull up her hair into a bun and stuff it under a surgical cap. Masks went on and hands were scrubbed.

They came to opposite sides of the boy who was laying with his shirt off. A team of nurses surrounded them, their tables of instruments gleamed under the harsh light.

"Based on the location, it looks like it pierced his lung." Reagan started. "We're going to need to move carefully. I'll start the suction." She said as she moved to pick up her own surgical instruments instead of asking them from a nurse. She handed him a pair of babcock forceps and a needle holder. "You find the hemorrhage." Reagan's eyes were the only thing that could be seen between her surgical cap and her mask and they flashed with resolution and pride. "It's a beautiful afternoon to save lives." She said loudly so the whole operating room could hear her and then turned to the boy. "Let's save yours, little one."

* * *

Reagan reached pass the scrub nurse and pull the cart of medical instruments towards her. She didn't have time to stumble around her basic Japanese when it could literally go from life or death in the matter of minutes. One nurse attached the boy to a heart monitor, and an oxygen mask went over his face. Reagan watched the screen, making sure his heart rate evened out before she turned and started to suction around Naoki's forceps.

Last year, when Reagan was working twenty-fours, a battered wife had driven her husband to the emergency room after stabbing him seventeen times in the chest. She spent twelve hours trying to play whack-a-mole with the bleeding, even though he ended up dying on the table anyway. She learned, though, the best thing that could be done for stab wounds was to treat the deepest part first and then move upwards.

A squeal to Reagan's left stole her attention and she watched the boy's heart rate and oxygen saturation levels start dropping. _He's not breathing._ She automatically moved to his head, picking up a breathing tube and a laryngoscope, to start endotracheal ventilation. Reagan was in the middle of trying to locate a teeny tiny glottis to start the tube, when another squeal of a machine caused her to look up at Naoki. "What's going on?" She asked.

"I hit something." Naoki said, his voice shaky. "Pneumothorax."

 _His lung is collapsing?_ Reagan finished putting in the breathing tube and then handed it off to a nurse to be started on a ventilator. She moved back around to the other side of the table, across from Naoki again and started to suction around his forceps.

There was a slight _clang_ and metal tinned against each other. Reagan blinked hard at Naoki's hands. "Your hands are trembling." She said, feeling her mouth drop open as she remembered the way he was sweating and the deep circles under his eyes this morning. _"You look like you're coming down with something. Or coming down from something?"_ That's what she had said. Irritability, insomnia, sweating, hand tremors. Those were catalog symptoms. "You're withdrawing." She almost screamed.

"I am not." Naoki argued, but they both watched as his hand and the surgical instrument he was holding continue to shake.

Anger popped in Reagan's chest as she realized it was _his fault_ that the boy's lung was collapsing. He probably shook so hard, he penetrated the pleural space. "Get _out_ of my operating room." She heard herself growl in a voice that she didn't recognize.

His eyes flashed angrily at her over his surgical mask. "This is my patient! You have no right!"

"Get your drug-abusing ass out before I have you escorted out!" She spat back, meeting his gaze. "It's your fault that his lung is collapsing!"

"You can't order me out!"

"You bet your sweet ass, I ca-," Her arm was touched and she whipped around to see the little boy's blood pressure plummeting and his heart rate skyrocket. She moved quickly, picking up a scalpel and quickly inserting a chest tube to relieve the air out of the boy's chest. She turned back to Naoki. "If this boy dies, it's _your fault."_

Naoki's eyes widened and flashed with a million of emotions. He handed his tools to the scrub nurse next to him. "It always is." He said quietly and moved towards the door.

Reagan regarded him for a millisecond, feeling a candle-flicker of regret for her words. _I will help you._ She vowed and turned back to the boy, his tongue hanging out around the tube in his mouth. _Right after I help you._

* * *

Kotoko felt overwhelmed as she looked each item of clothing in her closet, trying to find something suitable for the funeral. She fingered each article absentmindedly, each item pinker than the last.

It had been six days, but it felt like six years. She wondered for a second if grief was mean enough to make time slow down so you had to suffer longer. Six days of weeping. Six days of rocking. Six days of not looking her husband in the eye.

She didn't blame him. She couldn't. It was like the doctor had said: Kotomi was already dead when Naoki had woken up. It was a freak, acute, deadly occurrence that none of them could've foresaw.

 _Unless…_

She had thought about it. What if he had agreed to let Kotoko put her down and gone to bed? What if he hadn't stayed up with her and fallen asleep by mistake? Would they have been able to save her? Able to get her to help fast enough? She backed up and sat down hard on the bed. There were so many scenarios that she had played out in her head. So many what-ifs that she needed answers to.

But she couldn't ask anyone. She didn't want to put more guilt on Irie-kun anymore than he was feeling.

"Kotoko?" Kotoko was brought out of her subconscious reverie by Naoki's mother, who stood at the doorway in a black dress and hat. "It's almost time to leave."

Kotoko looked up at Oba-sama. The generally bouncy and bubbly woman looked ten times older. Did grief make time go faster so that you aged quicker? "I don't have anything black to wear." Tears flooded onto her face all of a sudden. It wasn't that she was sad that she _didn't_ have black. It just felt like the flood gates were opened.

"Oh, honey," Oba-sama hurried in and sat next Kotoko, wrapping her arms around her daughter-in-law. "I have something you can wear."

Kotoko gripped on Oba-sama and and cried onto her shoulder, staining the light material with her tears. "This feels so unreal."

"I know," Oba-sama gripped tighter. "I know."

"We need to go."

Kotoko jumped, startled and opened her eyes to Irie-kun standing in the doorway wearing his suit. All Kotoko wanted was to run into Irie-kun's arms and tell her that it was going to be okay. They were going to be okay. She wanted to hold him through this nightmare as closely as she could. She wanted to know that he wasn't going to disappear too. She _needed_ to know that he wasn't going to disappear too. But, the steeled, unemotional look in Irie-kun's eyes kept her frozen to the seat on the bed, her arms around his mother instead.

Did grief take your happiness along with the people you love?


	8. Chapter 8

Reagan could've let a nurse finish up and pack the wound, but she didn't really want to leave the ER yet. The betrayed, surprised look in Dr. Irie's eyes was seared into the back of her head. She sighed a little. This was such a curveball that she was sure she almost spun completely around.

She barely knew him. There relationship was days old, at best. And yet they've stared at the face of anxiety, addiction, even the brink of death. _Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick_ was a line of the Hippocratic oath she swore when she received her medical doctorate. Who would've known that this would extend to her colleagues? A fellow doctor?

She assumed when she was approached with the invitation to come to Japan, that she would teach, maybe see some sights, and then leave. They were approaching a handful of medical doctors from America to show their own new and innovative procedures as part of Prime Minister Abe's initiative to revamp their healthcare system. She was excited and apprehensive and honored to be considered. Now she realized that fate brought her here for a completely different purpose than showing a bunch of doctors DHCA.

She threw her tools on the tray next to her and looked around the room at the group of nurses, masked and capped. "Good job, everyone." She tried to smile at the group, knowing full well that they couldn't see it and that most of them probably didn't know what she was saying. They ended up saving the boy and cauterizing the bleeding. Now he just had to let his own body do the rest of the healing. Her job was done here.

Reagan got out of the way of the nurses so that they could finish up and move him to recovery. She ripped off her gloves and pulled the neck of her stained surgical gown, dropping everything in the hazardous items bin.

She was in the middle of scrubbing out when a thought occurred to her: Naoki practiced by the same oath. He swore the same lines. _First, do no harm._ Practicing under the influence of any medicine was dangerous and reckless. He had a responsibility to uphold himself. No one could do it for him. And if he didn't want to practice by the code of conduct that every other doctor practiced under, then he shouldn't be practicing at all.

 _I feel like I am drowning and I can't find which way is up._

Her eyes squeezed shut. She had been having nightmares the last couple of nights from that day. Naoki on the edge of the bridge, his words echoing around her over and over. His eyes were hollow, like looking into the center of black holes. And then he would jump and she would be too slow to save him and she would wake up before he hit the water.

If she went to the Chief, what would happen? She didn't know the intricacies of Japan's cultural norms yet and that frustrated her. Would he be given a second chance, rehabilitated and allowed to come work again? Or would he be ostracized? She bit her lip. She knew from brief research that mental illness wasn't thought of the same here than in America. Would he not be able to practice at all? Would telling the Chief rob him of being a doctor?

"You're going to make your hands bleed."

Reagan snapped out of her thoughts. Her hands were still underneath the water and she had vigorously scrubbed them bright pink. She felt herself blush at being caught daydreaming and turned to see Naoki, his tie haphazardly done and his eyes grey and unfeeling. "I didn't real-,"

"I'm sorry for what happened." His gaze floated to something above her head. "I can promise it won't happen again."

Reagan pulled towels out of the dispenser and dried her hands, not wanting to meet his cold eyes. "I've heard that before."

"I mean it this time." He looked down at her hard before turning around and starting for the door.

"Naoki!" She called and he froze in his tracks. "What is it? You know, that you're withdrawing from?" She bit her lip as she watched him move out the door without answering her. _What would happen if she took his last joy away? Made him an outcast among his peers? A social pariah?_

She shivered when she remembered his empty, abysmal eyes from her nightmares and decided that she didn't want to find out.

* * *

Naoki's never taken his meds _at_ work before. He's taken them on the way home from work, so by the time he was at his door, his vision was blurred to the point that he couldn't see which key to use. He sometimes took them couple of hours before being expected at work, letting himself enjoy the tail end of the high on the train.

His head laid heavily on his arm as he shook the bottle of blue and yellow pills, watching them rattle against the walls of the container. He had spun the blinds that hung in front of the window of his office and snapped the light off to make it seem like he was gone for the day. And he was, just not physically.

He's never taken his meds _at_ work before, but he decided this afternoon was an exception.

But he didn't want to go home just yet. He wanted to make sure that Reagan wasn't going to run to the Chief in a blind rage. He half expected her to. Her expressive green eyes in the operating room went through emotions so fast, it was like a kaleidoscope. Disbelief, anger, fear, resolve. But more than that. She lit up from the inside out in that operating room. She was a strobe of passion and obsession with medicine. She moved like it was a dance between her and the patient, and the music was her skill. It was beautiful.

He expected her to run to the Chief, because anyone who didn't take medicine as seriously as she did, shouldn't be practicing medicine. He knew this because he had been the exact same way.

He opened the drawer next to his knee and dropped the pill bottle. His head was getting heavy and his vision was going soft around the edges, but at least the shakiness in his hands and the sweating was gone.

He closed his eyes, letting himself drift off in a heavy, drug-induced sleep, his head on his desk.

What he wanted to tell her was that he didn't want to be like. He didn't choose to be like this.

This is just what happens when your surrounded by echoes you can't get away from.

* * *

Reagan walked from the surgical department to pediatrics, where the boy, whose name she learned was Kohta had been transferred too.

She found Dr. Takahashi leaning in the threshold of his room, his hands in his lab coat pockets, his thin wire glasses falling down his nose. "How's he doing?" She peaked in next to him. The boy was laying in the first curtained section. She couldn't see all of him, since the cartooned-adorned curtain was pulled halfway, but she could see his face peeking, his eyes shut as he slept.

"He is doing better," Dr. Takahashi looked down at her. "Thanks to you and Dr. Irie."

"He's the real hero." Reagan leaned opposite of the ER doctor. "Fighting off a mugger? I'm so impressed."

"I heard that that wasn't the only fight he was caught in the middle of."

Reagan felt herself glow red in the face. "What did you hear?"

"Not much, unfortunately. The nurses aren't as fluent in English as you and I are." He chuckled. "I just know that heated words were exchanged and you kicked Dr. Irie off of his own patient."

Reagan sighed a little. Out of relief or frustration or regret. She didn't know anymore.. "That's not _exactly_ what happened…"

Dr. Takahashi shook his head. "I only care that the patient was saved." He made a motion towards the boy. "Beyond that, how Dr. Irie destroys his career is for him to decide."

"I heard he was a pretty good doctor."

"He's a great doctor." Dr. Takahashi shrugged. "Everyone's seen him throw away his potential, though. It's a shame, but life has given him, how do you Americans say, lemons?"

"I think you're thinking 'when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,'" She chuckled.

"Ah, that's it." He nodded. "Yes. Well, he hasn't made lemonade. If you ask me, I don't think he's capable."

Reagan was surprised hearing about Naoki in this manner. Everyone spoke so respectfully and reverently of him. For Dr. Takahashi to be so blunt, it made her wonder what _he_ had witness with Naoki. "Capable?"

Dr. Takahashi shrugged again. "He's been brilliant his whole life. He's never been able to find an obstacle to that he couldn't overcome. It's made him, er…" Dr. Takahashi pushed his glasses up his face. "Weak." A nurse approached the ER doctor and spoke quickly in Japanese. He turned back to Reagan when he was finished and gave a short bow. "Excuse me, my attention is needed elsewhere."

Reagan watched him jog down the hallway and turned back to the sleeping child. _Weak._ That's the word he used. Is that what his colleagues thought of him? Is that what they would think if he was found out? _Weak._ She didn't think he was weak. No. He needed help, sure. But she had never thought of him as weak. Was that what he was scared of? Being called weak? Is that why he couldn't seek help?

She sighed again. She was doing a lot of sighing lately.

 _What do I do?_

* * *

 _"Kotoko, where are you going?"_

 _She stepped into her shoes without saying anything. She didn't pick up her bag. She didn't move to say goodbye. She didn't turn around. "I am going for walk."_

 _"Kotoko," Naoki moved down to the genkan and grabbed her elbow. She jerked so violently out of his grip, he was afraid that he left marks on her arm. "I'm sorry."_

 _"'I'm sorry' isn't going to bring her back." Kotoko said, her voice hitching on the end. "Yelling isn't going to bring her back. Fighting isn't going to bring her back. Hitting is-,"_

 _"Kotoko, please." Naoki felt tears hot in his own eyes. "Turn around and look at me."_

 _Kotoko turned slowly and tipped her head up at Naoki. Where her eyes were supposed to be, were two big dark holes and maggots were crawling in and out, like they were rotted pieces of meat. She opened her mouth and a sea of blood pooled down her chin and hit her blouse and shoes. "You did this to me."_

 _He took a step back, horror sinking in his stomach and tripped over the step of the genkan._

Naoki woke up, sweat pooling around his hairline and he was panting like he had just jogged a marathon. _It was a nightmare._ He breathed a sigh of relief as he looked around his dark office and wiping the drool off of his face, trying to calm his heart that beat a hard cadence against his ribcage. _Just a nightmare._

 _The only nightmare is being awake._

He sighed at his constant companion, thanking him for stating the obvious. He looked at his phone and noticed he had three missed phone calls from his mother. That was one more than usual. He panicked and hit the redial button.

"Moshi Moshi."

"Mom?" He asked. "I missed your call."

"Onii-chan!" She sang and all the panic in Naoki's chest melted away into frustration. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Mom, what is it?"

"I can't just call my eldest son and ask him how he is doing?" She asked.

"Mom." He groaned.

"Oh, alright." She said. "I just wanted to make sure that you were coming to dinner next week."

"Yes, why?"

"Well your father has an executive that has a daughter…"

"Mom!"

"…and we invited the both of them."

"Why would you do that?"

"So you can meet new people, Onii-chan." She said. "She's very sweet. I think you guys would-,"

"I have a girlfriend." He spat. He didn't know what to say or think, honestly. He didn't want to 'meet new people.' He didn't want to sit through an awkward dinner with his parents, while his mom pushed a stranger onto him. He didn't want to have to force small talk with another stranger. He didn't want to get anyone's hopes up, only to disappoint them.

"Onii-chan," His mother managed. She sounded downright speechless, stunned silent. "What is her name?"

Name? _Name?_ In the fog of sleep and medication, he rounded out the first name that came to mind. "Reagan."

And he regretted it as soon as it came out.

* * *

 **So, I got like four episodes into the 2nd season and I kind of want to stab Naoki in the face for being a really bad husband. Like, please don't verbally abuse your wife? Like, what in the ass? I know you probably have an undiagnosed developmental disorder that prohibits you from actually enjoying relationships and forming emotional connections, but why you gotta act like a douche biscuit all the time? Kotoko is a beautiful tropical fish and you are ruining everything with your stupid face. Tell me if it gets better in the comments because no shit I'm about to quit, this is so frustrating.**


	9. Chapter 9

"My Lord," Reagan said as she held up a plastic to-go container full of something green but also brown and cut into a perfect square. She couldn't figure out if it was organic or not. Honestly, it looked like a streptococcus culture she did back in micro-biology in college. "What the heck is this?" An older lady wearing a muumuu came out of hiding in her shop and started barking things at her in Japanese. Reagan dropped the container of mystery meat and backed away. "Sorry, sorry."

Reagan gripped the handles of her purse as she made her way down the street to her apartment. She was trying to find some food since all she had in her fridge at home was a bottle of wine and some Sriacha sauce. She looked up at the sky that was starting to churn with clouds, getting ready to unload like a jilted teenager after prom and quickened her pace. _What I wouldn't give for a gigantic corn dog._

She was homesick. She missed the beach and the food and her crater that fit her body perfectly in her bed. She missed watching _Game of Thrones_ with Thomas and honking at people in traffic from behind the wheel of her Honda. She missed Jimmy John's and Chipotle.

 _Stop being a baby._ She thought. _You're fine._ And that was true. She had a pretty huge apartment for Tokyo and she got to work alongside really brilliant doctors and she still got to practice medicine. She was fine.

A neon yellow light caught her attention. She almost jumped with joy at seeing the golden arches of McDonald's and hurriedly crossed the street, already tasting the sweet and salty Big Mac sauce and the crispy, hot French fries.

She ordered and sat down in one of the formed, plastic booths and pulled a small textbook out of her bag. _Learn Japanese the Easy Way._ She was about to dig in, not only in her food, but into Japanese vocabulary, when her phone rang.

"Hey, Beautiful." Thomas said on the other line. "What are you up to?"

"Eating McDonald's." She chuckled to herself. "You know, the sexiest thing I could do on a Friday night."

"McDonald's, really?"

"It has food I can pronounce!" She defended. "And doesn't have octopus in it, one way or another."

"Well, at least I know you aren't gaining weight." He made a noise. Reagan looked down at her French fries that were starting to stain their box with grease and didn't feel as hungry as she did before. "Anything interesting happen?"

"Not really," She said and pulled the top bun off of her burger and started picking off the small, reconstituted onions. "There's this one doctor that's a real pain in my ass."

"Is he hitting on you?" Thomas asked suddenly. "I'll be on the next flight over, babe. I swear…"

"No," She laughed. "Nothing like that. He's just slimier than a horse trough." She flicked another onion and wondered what Naoki was doing right now. She sighed and imagined him in an alley or bathroom somewhere getting high. What would compel someone to have to live their life in a drugged up fog? To self-abuse? To suicide?

"Well, you say the word," Thomas teased. "I'll mess everyone up."

"I know you will." She said and watched the people pass the window she was sitting next to. She caught herself looking for Naoki in the faces and felt the heat rise in her face, even though she knew Thomas couldn't see her at all. "I know you will."

 _This was going too far._

* * *

Naoki had a suspicious feeling that Reagan was avoiding him.

Maybe it was the way every time their eyes met in the hallway during rounds, her big green ones would bug and she would duck into the nearest door opening or around the corner or next to a nurses' cart. Maybe it was the way she called on everybody but him in the DHCA exercise.

He wouldn't normally care or notice at all, really. But he needed her for his parents' dinner. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of bringing Reagan. She didn't speak Japanese, so if his parents mentioned anything that happened before, she wouldn't understand to ask questions. They would be infatuated with a blonde American woman and spend the whole evening trying to impress her. And he would skate through unnoticed and unscrutinized.

But now she was avoiding him. Which was funny, since Naoki couldn't get away from her just yesterday. He wondered what changed.

He wondered what she found out.

 _She found out you're worthless._

 _You lost her too._

He stopped in the hallway next to a supply cart that was filled to the top with towels and sheets, feeling a panic attack coming on. Nurses and orderlies rushed around like bees in a hive, always on the move, never paying attention until there was an emergency. He could hide in plain sight in hallways.

He sucked in air and exhaled through his nose. He heard a light, bubbly laugh and saw Reagan walking down the hallway with Kazuki, her translator. She was wearing the blue scrubs that marked her a surgeon and her wavy, strawberry blonde hair had been pulled back into a clip. When she laughed, her eyes shut tight and her hands came up to face. _Just like Kotoko._

That sent Naoki over the edge, the wave panic washing over him.

 _Don't you need to talk to her._

He did. And this was a good opportunity.

 _Suffer._

He inhaled and exhaled, trying to calm the tachycardia in his chest as wave after wave of panic threatened to crush him under its weight. He waited for Reagan to pass by, almost missing her as he tried to ride out the panic attack. He grabbed her hand and pulled her into an empty hospital room, clicking the door shut behind them.

Naoki leaned against the door and slid to the floor, the pounding in his head making him dizzy. He was terrified, but he wasn't in danger. It was all in his head. Which made it worse, almost.

 _You're going crazy._

Reagan spun around, her tennis shoes squeaking on the tile floor, her eyes flashing angrily. "I told you not to pull me into random rooms-," She stopped midway, her expression going soft and her eyebrows pulling together. "Are you alright?" She kneeled down in front of him.

He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out were vowel sounds. He managed something, but it was in Japanese and he watched Reagan's face twist a little with confusion.

"Is it medical?" She asked and pressed her fingers against the carotid artery in his neck. He shook his head, his walls collapsing and his lungs screaming. It was like a building was collapsing around him, fire and explosions and danger on all sides, and he was frozen in place. "Alright." She moved and sat next him, and rubbed small circles onto his back. "It's okay. Just breathe."

 _I haven't been able to breathe in years._ He thought. Finally, it started to pass. The crushing wave of panic started to subside, he didn't feel like he was being pulled to the bottom of the ocean. He leaned his head against the door and focused on inhaling and exhaling. He peeked open an eye and saw Reagan had rested her chin on her knees, her enormous green eyes watching him with concern. He noticed for the first time all the blue in her eyes, and noted that they were exactly like grass, but more like the sea on a clear day. "Did you really pull me in here to watch you have a panic attack?" She asked after a second.

Naoki shook his head. "No, that was coincidental."

Reagan narrowed her eyes "Then why am I here?"

"I need to ask you a question."

"…okay?"

"Are you avoiding me?"

Her eyes flashed for just a second before she lowered them to the ground. Naoki couldn't guess what that emotion was. "You are really distracting…" Her eye rolls up to meet his. "And not in a oh-he-has-a-cute-butt kind of way, but more like you-are-going-to-give-me-an-ulcer kind of way."

"Why?"

"Because whether I like it or not, I have to know that you are okay."

"So you're avoiding me?"

"Yes." She said. "If I don't witness any more of," She made a waving motion in the direction of Naoki. "whatever is going on with you, I don't feel like its my responsibility."

"It's not your responsibility." Naoki snapped. "I told you that."

"I know," Her voice heightened. "But its not everyday you almost watch someone throw themselves off of a bridge, Naoki. And frankly, it freaked me out. You have to cut me a little bit of slack."

He sighed. "I'm sorry for putting this on you."

"Well, I accept your apology." She rose to her feet. "If you excuse me, I have a ping pong ball-sized tumor that I am going to assist in resecting-,"

"Wait," He rose to his feet. "That wasn't the question I wanted to ask."

One of Reagan's eyebrows rose and she crossed her arms. "Ping pong ball-sized tumor, Naoki."

"Will you come to dinner with me?"

Her jaw dropped open and a weird look crossed her face. "Why?"

"I told my parents that I am working with an American and they really want to meet you." _A little lie never hurt anybody._ He thought.

"You want me to come to dinner with you and your _parents?"_ She brushed her fingers through her hair and made it puff up. "This is a dream. I am dreaming. I am going to wake up and find out this was some weird nightmare."

"It would be a favor to me."

" _A favor?"_ She almost screamed and then started laughing. "You're funny. That's really hilarious. What a good joke. You really got me there."

"I'm being serious." He rolled his eyes. "If you do this for me, I will do whatever you want."

Her eyes narrowed. He could almost see the gears turned behind her eyes. "Whatever I want?"

 _I am going to regret this._ "Yes."

Reagan let her crossed arms fall to her sides. "Okay," She nodded. "I'll do it. But just to warn you, I will make you suffer for it."

 _Don't worry, you already are._

* * *

 **Well, there was a unanimous vote for me to continue Season 2. Your overwhelming support and love will get me through every frustrating scene with Naoki and his awkward head pets**.


	10. Chapter 10

**Hello pallorinos, sorry this took so long to get up. I had some writer's block, so I hashed some later scenes and then I did some Business Law homework and then I graffiti'd my name on the ProActiv vending machine in my local mall.**

 **Anyway, this dinner is going to be doing a lot of quick back and forth and dialogue overlap, blah blah tropes blah blah plot devices blah blah blah. You get the picture. Enjoy and review pls.**

* * *

Reagan sighed against the window of her apartment. The city below was bright and loud, lights and cars and people milled like ants below her, even though it was the middle of the night. Being twenty stories up, she could see the skyline of skyscrapers, silhouetted against the grey sky. She pressed her cheek harder against the glass. She had been here exactly a week now. Exactly a week since she stepped on the plane, since starting a new adventure in Japan, a land she only dreamed about visiting.

Exactly a week since she had saved a man from suicide.

And now she's going to meet his parents.

Reagan turned around and went to her closet. She didn't exactly _have_ anything to wear to a date. She brought comfortable clothes and walking shoes, since when she wasn't in the hospital, she wanted to sightsee. She rummaged around, pulling out shorts and shirts and throwing everything on the bed.

 _Why did he invite her?_

She made a frustrated noise. To mess with her head, was her best guess. She already couldn't sleep because of him. Her dreams were plagued replaying that day over and over, but instead of saving him, she was just a moment late. A word short. And he was already gone. She would always wake up panting, her heart still in throat, his heartbeat still on her fingertips.

To mess with her head? Or his parents'?

She stopped sifting and sat down with a shirt she had thrown in her suitcase last minute in her lap. Her eyes narrowed with a thought occurring to her. _Was he using her to distract his parents?_ It made a lot of sense. She was the scapegoat since she couldn't understand Japanese, but she was novelty to a group of people that have had little to no interaction with a Georgian before. She was a perfect diversion.

"That man is slipperier than trying to catch a pig rolled in Crisco." She shook her head _._ She dug around and pulled out a pair of destroyed denim shorts that were best fit for a club and a nice revealing top. She pulled out her cowboy boots that she wore on the plane. And then when she was done compiling an outfit that was both outlandish, and embarrassing for all parties involved, she pulled out her Japanese textbook and flopped down on her shaggy fur rug.

 _If a distraction is what you want, then a distraction is what you're going to get, Naoki Irie._

* * *

A mixture of emotions churned inside of Naoki when he saw Reagan leaning up against his parents' gate next to the sign that read 'Irie.' Surprise, panic, regret, embarrassment, and dread were only among the few. It was less like the constant hurricane inside of him and more like what happened when he ate too many corner store takoyaki when he was a boy.

She was wearing a pair of cut-off shorts that had the pockets sticking out the bottom and a shirt that showed off the blue jewel that was stuck in her belly-button. He looked at her feet where she was wearing worn and dirty cowboy boots. It was like she was a cartoon character. "What are you wearing?" He asked, trying to mask the sheer revulsion in his voice.

She made a face. She had done her makeup, and her bright green eyes were framed by long eyelashes and brown eyeshadow. "Am I not dressed appropriately? This is how we always do it in America."

"I'm not stupid, Reagan." He growled a little too harshly. "You did this on purpose."

"So what?" She shrugged. "I'm just being used as a distraction from you. Why not dress distractingly?"

He felt the heat rise in his face. Reagan might act like Kotoko, but she was much sharper than Kotoko and he kept making that mistake with her. "You figured it out."

" _I'm not stupid, Naoki."_ She mimicked his voice and crossed her arms. "Of course I figured it out. You could've asked one of the hundred girls working in that hospital and you chose the blonde one with the accent from the _How the West Was Won."_

Beyond his control, he felt himself smiling a little at her. "You are really _distracting_."

She smiled back and spun a little. "I think I wore this exact outfit on my twenty-first birthday." She grabbed his arm. "So, what I couldn't figure out is - do they think I'm just your date? Or am I your girlfriend?"

Naoki cheeks lit on fire when he thought back to the conversation with his mother. "The latter, unfortunately."

* * *

Reagan fluffed her curly hair as Naoki rang the doorbell. From the inside she could hear commotion that she could only equate to a herd of cattle stampeding over the edge of cliff. She looked at Naoki with confusion, but instead of explaining, he just closed his eyes and sighed a little.

The door flew open and Reagan came face-to-face with two smiling, middle-aged Japanese faces. "Onii-chan!" They both screamed a flurry of Japanese. Reagan, despite her best efforts to cram a whole language in a night, only got bits and pieces of what they said. But she could deduce that he was being scolded for not coming sooner. Naoki grabbed Reagan by the hand and pulled her up to the large genkan.

He made a quick remark that shut them up and introduced Reagan. Reagan bowed a little. " _Oaidekite ureshii desu." Nice to meet you._ She also turned up her accent a little, moving from everyday Georgian to the movie _Deliverance_ Georgian.

They looked at her, _really_ looked at her. Reagan smiled a little as she watched the same emotional reaction that took place on Naoki's face happen to them. Surprise, regret, anger even. She side-glanced at Naoki who had taken his usual disinterested expression. They finally settle on masked disbelief. "It's nice to meet you." His father stepped forward and shook her hand. His English was nowhere near as good as Naoki's. "Dinner is this way."

"Onii-chan." They all stopped as a boy of eleven or twelve ran down the stairs. He jumped on the landing and his eyes went from happiness to disbelief and then anger when they came to rest on the Reagan. He turned to Naoki and started yelling something. His mother interjecting with a scold. Naoki answered back in a frustrated tone, but there was something else there, something familiar. His eyes tightened around the edges, like something the little boy said physically hurt him. The little boy burst into tears and ran back up the stairs.

"What's wrong?" Reagan asked, trying not look as dumb as she felt.

"That was Yuki, my little brother."

"Why is he crying?" Reagan asked and turned to look up the stairs. "Is he okay?"

"No, but he will be." Naoki said and started moving through the living room, dragging Reagan by the arm behind him. "We all will be." He said under his breath so low the only barely heard him.

* * *

Naoki heard the thumping on the stairs before he saw Yuki. He could guess what his parents would think of Reagan, but he never thought about Yuki's reaction. He was surprised when Yuki's usual expression of happiness dissolved into surprised anger.

"Who's that?" He stopped on the landing on the staircase, obviously upset. A mix of emotions crossed his face. "You already replaced Kotoko? With _her?"_

 _Kotoko._

The pain in Naoki's chest was like a knife being driven into his chest over and over at Kotoko's name. It took all of his willpower not to about-face and run to his apartment and drink himself until he could see or hear or feel anymore. Until he was the corpse he felt like he should be.

"Yuki, that isn't nice to say to your brother."

"That's not what's happening…" He started with an edge to his voice that he has _never_ taken with his brother before.

"I don't care." Yuki said, his eyes flashing. "I didn't want to believe that you _already_ had a girlfriend. But she's not a girlfriend. She's a stupid American whore! I bet Kotoko so sad right now! She would've waited for _you._ " He turned around and ran back up the stairs.

"Yuki!" His mother started up the stairs after him. "Yuki!"

There was a soft touch on Naoki's arm and he instinctively recoiled a little, but then looked down to see Reagan's big green eyes full of concern and confusion. _If she only knew what Yuki had said about her._ "That was Yuki, my little brother."

"Why is he crying? Is he okay?"

"No, but he will be." He looked up the stairs and took Reagan's small hand. _We all will be._

 _No you won't._

Fingers of ice and panic tightened around Naoki's chest as they moved from the living room to the kitchen. There a strange girl sat next to a man in a business suit, a small blush covering her cheeks. She looked up at Naoki and then Reagan and then dropped her eyes back to her lap. Naoki sighed internally, he's seen _that look_ so many times before. If girls weren't screaming over him, like Kotoko used to do, they were trying to act coy and shy, like that one girl Matusmoto used to do. He didn't feel like dealing with it tonight. He physically _couldn't_ deal with it tonight.

"This is my colleague Akiyama Goro and his daughter Elaina." His father introduced and then turned to his guests. "This is my son Naoki and his girlfriend Reagan."

Goro-san's eyes widened at Reagan. "Are you American, Reagan?" He asked in pretty good English.

Reagan's eyes widened with recognition. "Yes! Born and raised on a cattle ranch in Georgia, but I live in California now! It's so nice to meet you!" She said and leaned over the table to shake his hand.

"Elaina's mother is American." He said. "We lived there when she was little."

"Oh my goodness!" Reagan laughed and sat down, resting her chin on her hand. "What part?"

"New York."

"Oh, how fun! Do you speak English too?

"Yes." Elaina said, her eyes flashing at Naoki as he sat down at the table.

"Oh, that's so great." Reagan sighed. "At work, I have this wonderful interpreter and I've been learning on my own, but when Naoki invited me tonight, I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to keep up!"

"What do you do for work?"

"Oh, I'm a neuro-surgeon!"

Naoki let his mind wander to what Yuki said. _She would've waited for you._ The words echoed around the corner of his mind. Kotoko did wait for him. For six years. And then for another eight months. Yuki was right. She would've waited for him. She gave him patience and loyalty and sincerity that he didn't deserve. That he never deserved. And he treated her like…

 _Oh, Kotoko._

He pushed back from the kitchen table, the chair legs making a beastly noise on the tile. "Excuse me," He said quietly as he noticed all eyes were now on him. "I'm going to the restroom."

He bounded up the stairs towards Yuki's bathroom and stopped when he heard Yuki arguing with his mother. He pressed an ear to the door.

 _"We all miss Kotoko," His mother said softly. "And everyone has to deal with it in their own way. Naoki is making friends; you should be happy for him."_

 _"It's just so unfair to Kotoko."_

Naoki moved from the door into the bathroom just in time to throw up in the toilet. This was a mistake. This night was a mistake. This dinner was a mistake. He wanted to go home and waste away into oblivion. He wanted to go back in time. He felt like a black hole, sucking all matter and feeling and sense through him and only giving back darkness. He sunk to his knees in front of the toilet.

 _Look at the monster you've become._

* * *

Kotoko laid awake, staring at the night sky through their bedroom window. The moon was bright and it cast a silver, white light through their room. She counted the number of cars that passed by their house and watched a small cloud move from one end of the sky to the other. She counted the steps Naoki took as he restively took as he paced around their house, mapping out his path in her head as the steps grew louder on the hardwood and softer on the tatami mats.

She gripped the comforter between her fingers. Naoki hadn't slept at all in five days and while he was known to work at all hours for days on end, this restlessness didn't come from a single-minded genius obsession on a particular task. This restlessness was insidious. It made the shadows on the wall feel bigger and more dangerous. It made the nights long. It put this new emotion of panic in his eyes and the ice in his hands that Kotoko had never experienced before.

She listened to his footsteps as he circled around their house again, a weird rhythm of soft and loud and soft again. She pushed back her covers and made her way downstairs. "Irie-kun?" She asked in the dark, waiting for her eyes to adjust. "Irie-kun?"

"Did I wake you?" He appeared in the doorway of their living room. "I'm sorry."

"Irie-kun," She said and moved towards him. "Why don't you come to bed?"

"No," He said. "I'm not tired."

"I'm not really, either." She said and grabbed both of his hands. She couldn't see his face in the dark, but his hands were cold and she used her fingers to try and rub some warmth into them. "But, if you lay down you might get tired."

"No." He pulled his hands away and turned around to go into the living room. "I can't."

"Irie-kun-," She started.

"Go back to bed, Kotoko."

"I miss her too, you know." She said, feeling tears catch in the back of her throat as she thought about her baby girl. Her arms ached to hold her close again. To feel her warm cheek against her chest. "You don't have to grieve alone."

He didn't answer as he moved through their living room into the kitchen, his form a little less tall than she remembered, like the grief weighed him down with a million pounds. Like the weight of the world was getting harder to hold up.

Her arms ached to hold him too.


	11. Chapter 11

Reagan was presented with a dish of food by Naoki's mother and focused on the task of picking up her chopsticks and with a quick _"Ittedakimasu."_ They began eating. The girl, Elaina, only spoke in one or two syllable words when Reagan or her father addressed her and spent the beginning of the meal switching her stare back and forth between Naoki and Reagan. Reagan guessed that she thought Naoki was an eligible bachelor. He was, but she didn't know that.

Reagan wondered if Naoki felt as uncomfortable as her. He held his steady, unemotional gaze on the table after he had come back from the bathroom. She wondered what he stared at, or if he was so lost in his own thoughts that he wasn't looking at anything at all. She wondered if she was going to get through the meal without pushing her chair back with a big _"Screw it! I got dragged into this mess! I'm going to a bar!"_

Reagan stuffed food into her mouth and avoided eye-contact with the girl across from her. The meal was silent until Naoki's father asked something about the food. Which she turned and responded with a big smile. _"Oishii!"_ She said. _"Anata wa ryouri ga jouza desu ne."_

His father smiled back. He seemed like such a nice, caring guy. His mother too. They looked like the type of people you just wanted to talk to all day over tea because they were so sweet. Reagan side-glanced at Naoki, his stone-cold gaze affixed on the table in front of him as he pushed his food around with his chopsticks and wondered what happened.

"Your Japanese is pretty good." Mr. Goro said and Reagan looked up at the older man.

"No," Reagan waved her hand around in front of her face. "It really isn't. I get weird looks all the time when I try to use it."

Mr. Goro turned and said something in Japanese to Mr. Irie. Mr. Irie giggled and said something back. "Mr. Irie said you're doing great."

 _"Arigato gozaimasu."_ Reagan turned and gave a little nod at her host.

"Onii-chan," Mrs. Irie piped up and took off in a scolding of Japanese. Naoki looked up for half a millisecond at his mother and snapped something back. They went back and forth, Naoki getting more and more apparently frustrated. Reagan tried to keep up, but then they got so fast that she gave up and watched their facial expressions. Mrs. Irie was getting flustered and Naoki was getting angry. It wasn't until a word was spoken - 'Kotoko' that Reagan saw a flash in Naoki's eyes. It was the same spark of anxiety, the same mix of emotions she saw over the operating table. The same emotion when she met him as he dangled off the edge of a bridge.

 _Desolation._

His fist came hard on the table and he stood up and barked something in Japanese. "We're leaving." He said and turned for the door.

Reagan stood up and bowed a little in embarrassment at his shocked parents' faces and then the Goros before turning and chasing after Naoki. "What happened back there?"

Naoki's face was twisted and he was breathing fast. "Nothing."

"Well, obviously something happened, because we're not staying for dessert." She said as she forced her feet into her boots on the genkan and followed Naoki into the cool night air.

"Tonight was a mistake."

She had to jog to keep up with Naoki's fast pace. She grabbed a wrist and pulled him to a stop outside of their gate. "Will you please tell me what's going on?"

"No," He shook his head and let his eyes float above her head. She could see the emotion was still there. That same darkness, like a hurricane, sweeping up everything in its destruction and leaving nothing behind. "It wasn't anything. My mother and I…" He started. "We don't get along. We haven't for awhile."

Reagan nodded, trying to understand. Trying but couldn't. She couldn't understand someone who kept everything so bottled up. He was like a shaken soda can, ready to burst into someone's face with the wrong touch. He needed help, but how could you help someone that ran as fast as they could away from their problems? _Weak_. That's what Dr. Takahashi had called him. Was it weak to not want to admit that you needed help? Or was that just a symptom of a much bigger disorder? She dropped Naoki's wrist. "Naoki, what's a 'Kotoko'?"

* * *

Naoki let the tics from the clock on the wall calm him as he pushed the soba noodles around in his dish with his chopsticks. Reagan was laughing with his father, who unsurprisingly could make friends with, despite the fact that they couldn't communicate with each other. His father could make friends with a houseplant, he was that friendly and sociable.

He wondered for a second what kind of a person he would've been if things turned out differently. He couldn't ever be as outgoing as his dad, that was for sure. But would he have friends? Colleagues he would go get a drink with after a long shift? Young fathers like himself to share stories and picture of their children? Would he spend his weekends teaching Kotomi how to ride a bike or throw a ball? Would he have taken his family to the beach on hot summer days and built sandcastles with his wife and daughter until the sun set on the horizon?

"Onii-chan," The interruption to his daydream came from his mother. He was brought down to Earth, a crash landing that felt more like a sock to the stomach. A slap of hard reality that he had _none_ of that anymore. He had himself and the voice in his head and pills. He turned to her for a second to register the cross look on her face. "You need to eat." She said. "You haven't touched your food at all."

"Maybe I don't want yakisoba." He snapped harshly. A flame of regret flickered in his chest as he watched a hurt look register on his mother's face.

"What do you want then, Onii-chan?" She said. "I'll make it for you."

 _I want Kotomi back. I want to be free of this guilt. I want Kotoko back. I want my life back._ He thought.

 _You want to die._

"I don't want anything." He said.

"No," She said and started to get up. "I'm serious. I will make anything for you as long as you eat it."

"I want to be left alone!" He yelled from across the table. "Why can't you people just leave me alone?"

"Because we worry about you!" She retorted. "You live all alone. You never call us. You keep getting thinner. You are always on edge and jumpy or unresponsive and mopey." She sighed. "We want to make sure you are okay. You are okay, right?"

"I'm fine." He said, letting his eyes drop. "I'm fine."

"You say that, but I don't think it's true." She said. "It's okay to talk to us. Losing Kotomi and Kotoko-,"

 _Kotomi._

 _Kotoko._

 _It's all your fault._

He slammed his fist on the table. _Stop. Please, just make it stop._ "I'm done." He stood up and turned to Reagan who was looking at him with confusion in her large green eyes. "We're leaving." He said in English to her and turned around for the door.

Anger and frustration churned hard in his chest and made his heartbeat too loud in his head. He didn't even feel himself slip on his shoes and walk out the door. He didn't feel the night air on his skin, even though the forecast earlier said it was going to get chilly. He almost didn't hear Reagan ask about what happened.

"Nothing." He breathed.

"Well, obviously something happened, because we're not staying for dessert." She snapped, her accent making the pitch in her words vibrate like a pulled rubber band.

"Tonight was a mistake."

He felt a hot hand grab his wrist, fingers brushing the scars he put there when he couldn't sleep at night and tried to jerk his arm away. "Will you please tell me what's going on?" She asked, her eyes filled with confusion and frustration.

"No." He started. "It wasn't anything. My mother and I, we don't get along. We haven't for awhile."

Reagan dropped his wrist and they stood there on the sidewalk in front of the sign that marked the Irie residence. A streetlight made Reagan's curly blonde hair shine. Her eyes pitched to his shoes. "Naoki," She started, her voice small and hesitant. "What's a 'Kotoko?'"

* * *

Reagan regretted the words as soon as she spoke them. As soon as she watched Naoki's face twist in a way that made her stomach sick. As soon as his eyes turned dead and grey, a window into the desolation of his mind. "Hey," She started for his hand, a touch of comfort that he diverged away from. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I overheard it when you were arguing with your mom and-,"

"No," He breathed. "You shouldn't have."

"If you don't want to tell me anything, it's fine. I get it. I-,"

"Why do you care so much?" He snapped, his eyes going cold. "What is in this for you?"

Reagan felt her mouth open and her mind go blank. _Why did she care so much?_ All she could think back to was her dreams. The dreams where she is too late to the bridge and he was already gone. Was that what she was scared of? Being a moment too late? She's been in control of so many lives before. She's brought them to the point of death, only to bring them back time after time. Sometimes she won. Sometimes she did not. It was how she understood the world worked. Not everyone could be saved. Why was she so hellbent on making sure Naoki was? "I don't know." She answered truthfully. "I just need to make sure you get out of this alive."

"I don't need you." He sneered and turned to walk away. "I'm not your patient. I'm not your responsibility."

"You're not my responsibility." She crossed her arms, trying to shield her underdressed body from the chilled air. "But, you are my friend."

"No, I'm not." He turned around. "And I'm sorry if any of my actions led me to let you believe otherwise."

Reagan felt her face go red with anger. A blast of breeze made all the hairs on her arms stand on end and her teeth chattered in her skull a little. "God, you're such an ass."

He rolled his eyes at her and Reagan expected him to turn and keep walking, but instead he breathed a frustrated noise and pulled off his dark blue cardigan and handed it to her. "Your outfit is horrible."

"I know." Reagan shrugged on the cardigan. It was a couple sizes too big, so it hung like she was a child playing dress up. But it was warm from his body heat and smelled like his cologne. "A moment of immaturity, I guess." She looked at the sleeves that hung past her hands. "Hey, you want to go to a bar and forget this evening happened?"

He was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on someone above her head. She expected him to say no or sneer and walk off or she didn't know, disappear in a cloud of smoke or something. She _did not_ expect the thing he said next though. "That's the most intelligent thing you said all night."


	12. Chapter 12

**tf? Two chapters in one day? There must be some freak phenomenon happening in the atmosphere. Or I ate too much Taco Bell. Anyway, a quick cameo from our favorite pair of sideburns. Enjoy and review pls.**

* * *

Naoki led Reagan to his favorite bar. It was a little hole-in-the-wall place that had been there since the Asuka period and he was certain that the bartender could've been even older than that. The bar itself was made from an old Dutch ship, but you couldn't tell that now with the amount of stains from spilled beers and bar fights. He loved it though. Everyone kept to themselves, but there was a sense of camaraderie that came from drowning sins and misery with alcohol. It was the closest Naoki got to friends in the recent months.

Except now. Why did she have to do that? They weren't _friends._ They weren't even acquaintances. He knew nothing about her except that she was an annoying American. And she knew nothing of him. Except that he had panic attacks. And self-medicated. And self-mutilated. And that he was suicidal. And she now knew Kotoko.

And yet she still hung around. She still looked at him with concern in her big green eyes. She still called him her friend.

 _Don't get too close._

They took two empty stools at the bar. Naoki ordered a beer and Reagan nodded the same and then pointed at the half-filled bottle of Jack Daniels sitting among the rest of the liquors on the shelf. The old-as-dirt bartender pulled it off the shelf and prepared two shot glasses. When he went to go put it back, Reagan pulled it out of his hand and set it on the bar. "We're probably going to be needing the rest of it." She smiled and the bartender shrugged and muttered an obscenity about Americans.

"Are you a fan of whisky?" She asked and spun the bottle around.

Naoki was a fan of anything that made him drunk enough to sleep. Although recently he had been drinking in the morning too to make the voice quieter. He drank quite a bit before going to dinner too to calm his nerves. His favorite was vodka as the smell dissipated quickly and it mixed pretty well with sleeping pills.

But he answered with a shrug and picked up the shot glass. Reagan picked up hers and tapped the bottom on the table before downing it. It burned the back of his throat and made his chest warm. He chuckled at Reagan's pinched face as she chased it with beer and moved to pour her another shot.

"I'm not really a fan of Jack." She said and pulled the bottle from Naoki's hand and poured him his shot. "I like Irish whiskeys, like Jameson. But if you told anyone in my family, they'd probably disown me."

"My mom likes to over-indulge in wine every once in awhile."

"I think that's every mom." Reagan smiled and took a sip of beer. "It's apart of the job description."

Naoki thought back to his mom, the disappointed, hurt look on her face. "I was too harsh on her."

Reagan shrugged and picked up her shot glass. "We're drinking to forget, remember?" They knocked back those and a couple of more. Naoki was surprised that even though Reagan was petite and thin, she could hold down her liquor pretty good. He wondered for a second if she was a closet drinker like himself, but as her face grew more and more twisted with every shot, he suspected not.

"I used to be good at this." She said as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "You know, in college. And medical school." A sheepish grin grew across her face. "And while interning."

"You liked to party?" Naoki asked, surprised at the teasing tone in his voice. "I wouldn't have guessed."

She pushed his shoulder. "Getting blackout drunk occasionally was my reward for working on a Ph.D and MD at the same time." She picked up her beer. "You can't survive medical school without at least a little alcohol."

"I did."

"You did not."

"I did." He defended. "Although, I wasn't a typical college student."

"I don't believe that. You were doing handstands on the keg every weekend. It's always the quiet ones that are the craziest." A playful smile crossed her face. Naoki noticed for the first time the dimple in her cheek and the way her eyes crinkled around the edges.

"It doesn't matter now." He said.

"I guess." She shrugged and his cardigan fell off of one her shoulders. He moved to fix it, his fingers brushing her skin where freckles dotted constellations.

 _What are you doing?_

What _was_ he doing?

* * *

Reagan felt a little unnerved by his touch. Sitting in this elderly dive-bar while polishing off an equally elderly bottle of whisky with a person she thought hated her. Her skin was already flushed and hot from the multiple shots, but now it felt like it was on fire. She tried to make it look like she didn't notice the touch. She tried to make it look like she wasn't taken completely off-guard by this man whose emotions only came out when he was threatening to kill himself.

She looked around the bar, trying to distract herself from the fact that she could still feel his fingertips on her skin. It was empty now, except the bartender who was drying glasses and putting them on a shelf. "Why this place?"

He looked down at his drink. She was starting to feel heavy and cloudy from the alcohol, but he seemed unphased, even though he had taken two more shots than her and was already halfway through his refill of beer. "It's quiet." He said. "I don't run into anyone I know here."

"Yes, because heave forbid anyone see that you can actually be human sometimes."

He looked at her over his glass, a flash of emotion in his eyes. "Why would anyone want to be human? They're so messy."

"Being messy is what makes being human fun." She smiled. "Without messy humans, we wouldn't have jobs."

"I guess that's true." He picked up the bottle of Jack and poured her another shot and moved to pour himself a shot. "But being messy isn't always fun."

"No," Reagan agreed. She looked down at his arms resting on the bar where she could see scars, purple like grape jelly, peek out over the hem of his sleeves. Without thinking about it, she brushed one delicately with her fingertips. "But realizing that its okay to be messy makes it easier to deal with."

"Irie!"

Naoki's surname both made them look towards the door. An angry man with large sideburns and a gold jacket walked towards them, obviously upset. Naoki sighed, but didn't move to greet him.

"Do you know him?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

The man came up to the both of them at the bar. He had a pompadour that was held in place with a lot of hair wax and expressive eyebrows. He looked at Reagan up and down before turning to Naoki and heatedly barking something in Japanese. Naoki bristled, but kept his eyes trained on the knotted scarred surface of the bar, a cool expression on his face. He answered back with an annoyed tone. Reagan picked out something like a "Why don't you leave us alone?"

The man made a harsh gesture in Reagan's direction and Reagan felt her skin light up with anger. "Excuse you, Eyebrows. Who do you think are ruining our already ruined evening?" She jumped to her feet and moved to bump chests. He was a full head taller than her, maybe even an inch or two taller than Naoki.

Naoki grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her so that she was standing behind him. He still held his cool expression, but kept his body situated in a defensive stance in between hers and Eyebrows. He said something quick in Japanese and picked up his beer and finished it off.

Eyebrows got into Naoki's face and started yelling at him. _"Zakennayo!"_ Reagan tried to get back around to diffuse the situation, but between her drunkenness and Naoki pushing her back, she was stuck behind him. "American whore!" He spat in English.

"Hey!" She called. "Screw y-,"

For a split second, everything went really slow. Reagan knew for a fact that this was her occipital lobe taking the massive amount of information taken in with her eyes and forcing her frontal lobe to translate it, using learned context and past memories that she knew. She also knew she was pretty drunk, the ethanol processed in her liver dampening her senses and reasoning. Thus making time appear to slow as she watched in horror as Naoki's fist connected with the face of Eyebrows, smashing his nose to one side and making him cry out in pain.

Naoki fell back and shook his hand in the air. Eyebrows fell to the floor, a geyser of blood starting out of his obviously broken nose onto his hand. Reagan stood frozen and looked back and forth between the two men. Naoki turned to the bar and took both shots that he had poured earlier and downed the rest of his beer and then picked up her half-full glass and finished that one off too. "Come on." He said and pulled his wallet out his pants and threw a wad of money on the bar. "Let's go."

"What about his broken nose?" Reagan asked dumbly.

Naoki looked down at Eyebrows. He said something in Japanese to him, but Eyebrows just sat with his hand over his face as blood oozed from between his fingers. Naoki bent down and pulled him up by the elbow and pushed him towards the door. "There's a clinic around the corner." He said. "We can drop him off there."

Reagan stumbled behind both the men, turning briefly to bow at the bartender who was watching everything from behind the bar, a towel still in his hand.

Naoki was right. Humans are messy.

She'd hate to tell him, though, that he was the messiest human she's ever met.

* * *

Naoki flexed his hurting hand as he used the other to push Kinnosuke down the sidewalk. It was late evening now, but the clinic down the street was open after-hours, he knew because he dropped a lot of drunks from the bar there to be taken care of until they sobered up enough to walk home.

He hadn't seen Kinnosuke since the funeral, but he was as obnoxious and dumb as ever. He was also a little drunk, but who wasn't these days? He could almost tolerate the insults Kinnosuke yelled at him about being a bad husband, a bad father. He knew those things were true, as he was told everyday by the voice in his head. He couldn't blame him too much for that. He was as affected as he was when it came to Kotoko. Maybe even more so. Naoki was just better at hiding it.

"I'm sorry." Naoki said quietly as they rounded the corner towards the clinic.

Kinnosuke stopped and bristled like he was going to argue, or start yelling at him again, but then let his shoulders drop in defeat, his hands still covering his nose. "I saw you through the window holding hands with a girl that wasn't Kotoko and I got mad." He explained. "I'm sorry too. It's none of my business."

"She's not my girlfriend." Naoki shook his head. "She's barely my friend."

Kinnosuke looked at Reagan. "She's obviously more than that if you are willing to punch people on her behalf."

Naoki flexed his hand again, trying to work out the hematoma that forming on his knuckles. He looked at Reagan in her skimpy outfit and oversized sweater who had stopped a couple steps behind them. "It was a thoughtless reaction."

"Okay," Kinnosuke turned towards the clinic. "Whatever you say."

"Sorry again."

"Tell that to Kotoko." He muttered and entered without looking back.

Naoki felt ice run through his veins at Kotoko's name and he pinched the bridge of his nose with his good hand. The alcohol and anxiety was making his stomach turn. What he wouldn't give to crawl into bed after tonight and slip into a dreamless sleep.

"How's your hand?" Reagan asked next to him. She wobbled a little on her feet.

"I'm fine."

"Yah sure?" Reagan picked it up to inspect it.

"I'm fine." He repeated, harsher this time and jerked his arm out of her grip.

"Okay, okay." She said, pulling his cardigan over her chest and crossing her arms. "It needs to be set. Or you could lose, um…" She snapped her fingers. "Range of motion."

"I'm going home." He said, his head swimming and his vision going soft around the edges. "Are you going to be okay finding your way home?"

"Sure." She said, her fingers coming to her face. "I get on the Yamanote line heading, um…"

Naoki sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose again. He just wanted to go home and get high and sleep. But he couldn't leave this drunk, half-naked American girl alone in the middle of Tokyo. Besides, all the trains stopped running an hour ago. "Come on," He said. "You can stay at my place for the night."

"Oh," She teetered before catching her balance and hurrying to catch up to where Naoki was standing. "That's very nice of you."

"Don't mention it."

"Almost like something a _friend_ would do." She teased as she bumped into him a little.

"I could change my mind, you know." He side-glanced at her, and could see her dimples, even in the dim streetlights.

"Okay, I'm shutting up." She held up her hands. "I'm shutting up."

 _What are you doing?_

What _was_ he doing?


	13. Chapter 13

Kotoko slid the lid on the bento box and tied the cloth around it, knotting it at the top. The hospital had given Naoki two weeks of leave. Two weeks of staring at each other pretending that their house didn't feel skeletal without Kotomi, and receiving friends' and family members' condolences, and pretending that they they were doing okay when they were asked, even though they were far from okay. They were a million light-years away from okay.

Naoki had retreated in on himself. He barely spoke or ate or slept. He read medical textbooks, poured over them with a rabid obsession, tearing through the pages at speeds Kotoko couldn't comprehend. And when he wasn't reading textbooks, he paced, a barren, wild look in his eyes.

Kotoko didn't know what to do. She would catch herself crying, tears free-flowing on her face at little things like when she dropped a glass of water and it shattered or when she found out they were out of milk. She cried standing in front of Kotomi's room, trying to recall the feeling of her head cradled in her hand. She cried in the bath. She cried herself to sleep. And when she felt like she had wrung dry of all of her tears, she found a new reason to cry. And all she wanted was for Naoki to pull her close to him and tell her that it was going to be okay. That they were going to be okay.

She placed the lunch in the refrigerator and moved to the door of Naoki's study. She placed both of her hands on the door and pushed herself in, tapping a knock to signal her intrusion. "Irie-kun," She started. "Your lunch is in the fridge for tomorrow."

Naoki's hair stood on end as his eyes traced textbooks from behind his desk. She knew that every word he digested in a flash and committed to memory even faster. He didn't move to respond or say anything, he just kept reading.

"Irie-kun," She started again. "Your lunch-,"

"Thank you," He answered without looking up.

"Irie-kun, are-,"

"I said 'thank you.'" He snapped, his voice harsh and sharp like a rusty dagger.

She had to ignore it. She told herself when he ignored her or snapped at her that he was hurting just as much as she did. She had to keep telling herself that or she would dissolve into a puddle right at his feet. She had to be strong. For him. "Irie-kun," She tried again. "You should go to bed at a decent hour tonight. You have the early shift tomorrow." _Come to bed so I can hold you like I used to do when the world was flipped the right way up._

He slammed his book close, a noise that made Kotoko jump in her skin. "I can't. I'll lose time."

"You can read textbooks tomo-,"

"I'm not reading textbooks." He pushed a stack of heavy books off of his desk and Kotoko watched as they slammed on the hardwood and splayed all over the floor. "I'm looking for a cure to arterial hemorrhaging. So-so that other children don't have to die on-," He sat down and pressed his face into his hands. "You don't understand. You won't understand."

"I understand. _I do._ " She said, trying to keep the tears from spilling. "You don't have to go through this alone, Irie-kun. Please-,"

"Just let me do this." He said quietly. "Just leave me be."

"But what about-,"

"Kotoko stop!" He shouted, his eyes wide and wild. He had never raised his voice with her before. She took a step back and tripped over the threshold of the door. Scrambling to her feet, she ran up the stairs two at a time. The walls felt like they were closing on her. She escaped to the bedroom and closed the door with a slam and locked it.

She sunk to the ground against the door and hugged her knees. She sobbed against the door. Why did this happen? She was finally happy. She had everything she ever dreamed. The man she loved. A beautiful daughter. A wonderful house and family. And now it felt like everything was being forced away from her. Like the rug was pulled out from under her and she was just falling for eternity.

"Kotoko," There was knock at the door and the doorknob tried to twist. "I'm sorry. Please. I didn't mean to yell at you. Please let me in."

She didn't answer. It was her turn to not respond, she deserved that. She just continued to hug her knees as she watched the list of reasons to cry grow longer and longer.

* * *

Naoki opened the door to his apartment and slid his shoes off on the genkan. He turned and helped Reagan, who was struggling with her boots. She stumbled into his apartment and looked around. "I like the way you decorated." She nodded and picked up a medical journal. "Like modern art meets hoarding. Very cool."

"I don't have time to clean." He explained lamely as he pushed some of the mess, a collection of journals, food containers, and empty beer bottles, off of his kitchen table onto a pile near the trashcan.

"You know," She said and turned, making his blue cardigan swish around her waist. "Motivation issues and the inability to focus on tasks are a sign of a depression disorder."

"You're talking too much again."

"Well, it's true." Reagan sat down on the edge of his bed and then cried out in pain. She reached under herself and pulled out an empty pill bottle. Naoki's heart leapt into his throat as he watched Reagan squint at the label of the pill bottle. "Diazepam." She read aloud like she was tasting it.

He waited for her reaction, his skin prickling with anxiety and embarrassment. He waited for her to laugh at him. Call him weak. His heart stopped. _Now she had a reason to tell the Chief._ She had proof. And lots of it. He had empty pill bottles scattered all over his apartment. He was going to lose his position, be expelled from his hospital. He wouldn't be able to get a job anywhere else.

"Naoki, are you addicted to benzodiazepines?" Her voice was heavy with concern. _Addicted._ He had never called himself an addict before. His mouth went dry at the thought. _An addict_? He self-medicated, sure. And he went over the prescribed dose. And he would withdrawal severely if he went without it for too long. But he wasn't an addict. He couldn't be. He was too strong for that. Addicts were weak.

 _You are weak._

 _Addict._

His lungs felt like they were exploding, and his heart was too loud in his ears. "I'm not an addict." He said, his voice breaking on the end. But it felt like a lie in his mouth. No matter how many times he tried to convince himself, he knew deep down it was true.

She stood up and moved to stand in front of him, her knuckles white against the pill bottle she gripped. "Naoki, I'm not going to judge you." She said. "I'm not going to laugh at you. It's okay to be honest." She gave a small smile. "It's okay to be messy."

"Are you going to tell the Chief?"

Reagan looked down at the pill bottle for a long moment and started picking the corner of the label off. "I should, shouldn't I?"

Naoki felt his world crashing around him. He was going to lose his only place of solace. At that point, what would he have left? What else would this world have to offer him? He sunk to the floor, trying to catch his breath, but couldn't. He slipped hard into a panic attack, his head feeling like it was exploding like a fireworks show, his skin burning at a million degrees.

"Hey, hey, hey." Reagan sunk down next to him. He felt a small hand rub circles onto his back. "Deep breaths. Just breathe."

"You can't…" He inhaled sharply and exhaled like he couldn't get enough air. His chest felt like a million pounds were dropped on it. "You can't…tell the Chief."

"You're hyperventilating, Naoki." She said, her eyebrows pulled together and she sat up on her knees and took both of his shoulders. "Just breathe. Just breathe."

"You can't-," He started seeing stars and Reagan sounded like she was yelling down a tunnel. "You can't-,"

"Where are your pills?" She asked and pressed her hand to his cheek. He focused on her face for a second before his vision started to go blurry. "Naoki, where are your pills?"

* * *

Naoki was starting to fade, respiratory alkalosis taking effect and his body compensating as he tried to take it more oxygen. His shoulders popped and his breathing was erratic and he was sweating with anxiety. Reagan gave him a little shake and his rolling eyes focused on her and he was able to mutter "Counter." Before sinking against his couch.

She got to her feet and ran unsteadily to his kitchen. She poured a couple of pills on the palm of her hand and one on the counter and smashed it with the bottom of a coffee cup. She swiped the dust onto her hand and ran back to Naoki, who was leaning with his head against the seat of his sofa, his breathing still coming in rapid succession.

She kneeled down in front of him and pressed the pills into his mouth and then rubbed the ground pill onto his gums with her fingertips. She felt dirty, feeding an addict more pills, but diazepam's other use was anxiolytic and was prescribed regularly for panic attacks.

She waited for the medication to take its hold and wondered for a second if she gave a large enough dose. She had treated addicts before. A lot of them were at the point where the CNS was fried and the lesions on their brain were becoming dangerous and life-threatening. Finally, Naoki took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled out of his mouth. Reagan felt herself releasing the breath she didn't even realize she was holding.

"I'm sorry," She choked. It was her fault that he had a panic attack. She knew the hospital meant a lot for him. She shouldn't have dangled it in front of him. "I won't tell the Chief, if it makes you feel better."

"You don't have to do me favors." He said quietly and rose to his feet and moved towards the bed, pulling a pillow and the throw blanket off. "I don't need your pity."

Reagan rose to stand in front of him. "I want to help you."

He scowled hard and sidestepped around her. "You can take the bed. I'll sleep on sofa."

"Naoki…"

"You know how you can help me?" He said and threw the pillow down on the couch. "Don't bring it up anymore. I like pills. They make me fall asleep. They let me sleep without nightmares. Why is that a bad thing?"

Reagan sighed. "You sleep in your own bed and I'll sleep on the couch."

"No," He argued. "I don't have a heater; you'll freeze on the couch."

Reagan crossed her arms. The room was starting to spin a little from the adrenaline wearing off the and alcohol and she felt like the leaning tower of Piza, but she planted herself firmly. "Will you just let me do stuff for you for once."

"Fine." He said and moved towards his bed. "Freeze. I don't care. I'm going to bed."

* * *

Naoki laid away. Panic attacks always left him pent up and jumpy, even though he could feel the pills and the alcohol weighing him down. He wished for sleep, deep sleep. But, he laid awake, his brain moving at a million miles an hour as he tried not to focus too hard on the growing shadows on his wall or the fact that voice had been screaming _You are going to lose the hospital_ at him for the last hour and a half.

Reagan's teeth were chattering in her head, but she was firm in her commitment to the sofa and had the blanket wrapped around her shoulders tight as she tried to fold herself to conserve warmth. He turned and watched her from across the room. Her hair was splayed over the pillow and her eyes were closed.

 _Don't get too close._

He wasn't. He promised. He tried to keep pushing her away. He was rude and mean and nasty to her and yet, every time he tried to shut her out, he gave her another reason to be let in. What would happen if he just laid it out for her? Just told her the whole truth? Would she still want to help? Or would she turn and run? "Reagan." He called out in the dark, but she didn't stir. He got to his feet and moved towards the couch. "Reagan."

"You gotta aim down the sights, Jimbo." She mumbled in her sleep and Naoki scowled at her a little. He shouldn't do this. He shouldn't. He reached down and pulled her up into his arms. Her skin was ice and her eyelids fluttered open.

"What are you doing?" She asked as she came awake and threw her arms tight around Naoki's shoulders so he wouldn't drop her.

"Your teeth were chattering." He explained. "I told you you would freeze."

"Naoki…" She groaned as he placed her in his warm spot on the bed and crawled in next to her.

"Just go to sleep."

She sighed and pulled the blanket around her shoulders into a cocoon. Naoki put his head down on the pillow facing her. He was so close could count the freckles on her forehead. He could see a small scar on her cheek that he didn't notice before. "Thank you." She breathed.

"Reagan," He said.

 _Don't get to close._

"Yes?"

"She was a girl."

"What?" Her eyes popped open.

"You asked what a 'Kotoko' was." He explained, the knife of grief stabbing him hard in the chest. "She was a girl."

Reagan's eyes slid back shut. "Did something happen to her?"

"She…" Naoki hesitated, feeling tears choke him out. He breathed hard and all of a sudden a hand ran the length of his forearm, delicately brushing over his cuts before finding his fingers and squeezing them. The touch should have made him recoil. It should have disgusted him, knowing someone knew the secrets on his arm. But it was so gentle, and unexpected and her hand was warm and he liked the way she rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb. He just laid frozen.

"You don't have to tell me." Reagan said, her voice heavy with sleep. "If you don't want to."

"I don't know what I want anymore." He whispered, but she was already asleep, her light snores filling the air around him. He scooted just a little closer so that he could feel her body heat radiate off of her, so that they were almost touching noses and moved his hand so that their fingers laced together.

For once in a long, long time, he drifted peacefully to sleep.


	14. Chapter 14

**I need to address a couple of things with you all:**

 **1) I know Naoki and Kotoko is the OTP. You don't want to see him with anyone else. I get that. I do. Y'all don't have to keep reminding me. I do want to remind you all though that you are still in the screaming death trap rollercoaster of emotion and chaos So, P _ara su seguridad, permanezca sentado con las manos, brazos, pies, y piernas dentro el barco. Y cuida sus niños. ¡Muchas gracias!_ or whatever. This means that I can twist this any which way I want. Keep that in mind as you navigate this sausage shit show of a fic**

 **2) Thank you for actually posting thoughtful reviews that actually make me think about different stuff in the story. As a writer, I appreciate that. Especially Tastitus or whatever the hell your name is. You are my ride or die. Luv u.**

 **K I'm done, enjoy and review pls!**

* * *

Reagan squinted at the sliver of sun peaking in from behind the curtains. She sighed in the last moments of sleep and tried to pull the blanket up around her arms, but it was stuck underneath something. She opened and rubbed her eyes to see the obstacle that kept the blanket glued at her waist, and saw Naoki's arm splayed across her abdomen. She turned and looked at him, his face pressed into his pillow as his long limbs starfished out towards each corner of the bed.

She had vague memories of him lifting her into his bed last night so that she could get warm. But everything was fuzzy from the alcohol and she had a hard time recalling exactly what happened.

Still, this was probably the mostly peaceful she had ever seen Naoki, his hair messy and his eyelashes fluttering as he breathed deep and heavy in sleep. She stroked the back of his hand with her finger, tracing the purple bruise that bloomed from between his knuckles. She was glad he was sleeping. She was glad he was getting rest.

She rolled so that she could face him, his arm still wrapped around her torso. His other arm laid on the pillow next to him, his fingers gently flexing. His eyebrows pulled together into a slight scowl and then he sighed and relaxed. _What do you dream about?_ She wondered for a second, her heart dropping in her stomach if he panics as much in his sleep as he does when he was awake. _Do you have nightmares? Do the demons bother you in your sleep too?_

His arm was covered in a number of lacerations at all stages of healing. Old ones that were fading into a purplish-gray, ones that had healed, the new skin a bright pink, fresh ones that were still scabbed over, the color of dark cherries. They were the map of a suffering man, a road of misery. _What did the world do to you?_

She bit her lip hard. She was done asking what happened. She was done watching him fight with his past. It was a losing battle. She was wanted to see the future. She wanted to see the light break through the darkness, like the first moments of a sunrise. _How do you heal? How do I help you heal?_

She was unsure that question had an answer.

Reagan gingerly picked up Naoki's arm that laid around her placed it on the bed. He stirred a little, but didn't wake up as she rose to her feet. She didn't want to move. In fact, she was quite comfortable watching Naoki sleep, counting his deep breaths, or the number of times his nose crinkled against his pillow, or the hairs that made up his thick eyelashes. She wanted him to get as much rest as possible. She wanted him to stay in a land where he didn't panic or hyperventilate or threaten to throw himself off bridges. She would've been comfortable there for eternity if she knew that he would have to wake up to dependence, anxiety, and depression.

But, she had to get to the hospital. She had some work to catch up on. She wanted some Tylenol for the hangover headache that pounded behind her eyes and she wanted to get out of last night's clothes and take a shower.

She padded to his kitchen in her bare feet, still wearing Naoki's cardigan, even though it was a wrinkled mess now, and started looking for the coffee maker. His counter was covered in layers of trash and papers and old food containers. She picked up a half-empty bottle of alcohol and smelled it, the sour scent of vodka burning her nostrils. Reagan didn't want to speculate, but after watching Naoki down a fifth of whisky and three beers with no problems last night, she had a feeling he also had a problem with drinking too.

She put down the bottle and picked up an old pill container and another one and another one and placed them all in the rubbish bin. She found the coffee maker with a stack of old mail on top with an inch of old dregs still at the bottom of the pot. And what she assumed was a fly in an advanced state of decay floating at the top.

Reagan prepared a pot of coffee, watching the brown liquid steam up the inside of the glass pot for a second. She scribbled out a note for Naoki, and leaned it against the coffeemaker and started for the genkan.

"Goodbye, Noaki." She said quietly towards the sleeping body before slipping out the door. "Sleep tight."

* * *

Naoki's eyes opened to the aroma of fresh coffee. He sat up suddenly when he realized that Reagan wasn't sleeping next to him anymore. He looked around his apartment, throwing the covers back getting to his feet. She wasn't in his small studio, though. He was alone.

 _All alone for the rest of time._

He pressed his hands to his face, the surface of his skin tingling with pain as he moved to his kitchen. He picked up a half-full bottle of vodka and unscrewed the cap to polish it off, when something caught his eye.

"What the…?" The coffeemaker made a slurping noise as it pushed out the last bit of water. Leaning against it was a note.

 _I didn't want to wake you, so I'm writing you a note. Thanks for letting me stay over for the evening. Hangovers are worth it when you had fun with a friend the night before. Catch you at the hospital for your next DHCA lesson!_

 _-R_

 _P.S. I'm borrowing your blue cardigan for a little while longer. Hope you don't mind._

Naoki read the note over and over. The words were committed to memory the first time he read it, but he was looking for something wanted to see if there was any indication that she thought less of him now that she knew about the drugs or Kotoko hidden in the meaning.

Although she had little to go off of to think highly of him in the first place.

He put the note to the side and picked up the vodka bottle. His stomach turned with disgust. _Addict._ That's what he was. Dependent to the point of preoccupation. At the mercy of _substances._ He threw the plastic vodka bottle on the ground and watched it bounce against the tile and slide halfway under the counter.

 _You need it._

"I don't." He said aloud. "I don't need it."

 _You do._

"No, Reagan's right, I need help."

 _Help? You won't be helped. You will be ostracized._

The voice was right. He would be ousted. He wouldn't be able to find another job. He would be branded as "crazy," a label that you just weren't allowed to wear. _Ever._ Crazy meant weak. Crazy meant different. Crazy meant he had a personality flaw he was unwilling to overcome. He was unwilling to move on from Kotoko and Kotomi rejoin society. That he was stuck in his grief, unable to function.

Everybody expected so much from him. He was a genius. Nothing was hard. He accomplished everything he with little effort. He was going to be the one capable of making a difference. He was going to be the one that changed the world. He was the poster-child for societal usefulness.

And now look at him.

 _You're crazy._

Reagan said he needed help. But she made it seem like help would be easy to find, when it never is.

He bent down and picked up the abandoned vodka bottle, untwisting the cap and finishing it in three gulps. Maybe he was an addict, but he wasn't crazy.

He wasn't crazy.

* * *

Reagan stood in a park that wasn't too far from her complex underneath trees that were starting to blossom with little white buds. It was still pretty early in the morning, and there were joggers and people walking to work through the park, but other than that, it was mostly empty. The sun was rising, turning the skies red and orange and a powder blue and she turned to squint at it, staring at it until she could see purple spots in her vision, until the cool morning air made her skin on her bare legs tingle with numbness.

Her apartment seemed sterile compared to the chaos that was Naoki's. She liked clean apartments, but even though Naoki's was covered in a thick layer of dust and depression, she enjoyed the things. It gave her an insight into his head. Thomas would've called it a type-A nightmare.

 _Thomas._

She picked up her phone from her bedside table, where she had left it the day before and sat on the edge of the bed. She had a miss call from Thomas. "Shit." She muttered and automatically hit the redial button.

` "'Ello?"

"Thomas, you're awake." She said and picked up her bedside clock. Japan was sixteen hours ahead, which meant it was midnight in California. She didn't think about that before she called him.

"Yeah, I went out with some of the boys." He chucked. "A bad substitution for my lady though. What's up?"

 _I just found out that the man I saved, you remember me telling you about that right? Well, he's addicted to drugs. And probably a closet alcoholic. We got really drunk. And he punched some guy with a pompadour and broke his nose. And then I stayed at his place for the night and we ended up…cuddling?_ "Not much." She choked out. "Why'd you call me?"

"Oh," He said. "Just to see how your first week went. And to rub it in your face that I'm going to Country Thunder and I'm not taking you with me."

She gasped. "Why would you do such a thing, you jerk! You know Country Thunder is my jam."

"Because my girlfriend ditched me to hang out with a bunch of Japanese dweebs." He sighed. "Seriously how much longer do you have out there? Three days? A day?"

She giggled at him. "Try a couple-eight weeks."

"God, that's like an eternity." He clicked. "Is that one guy still bothering you?"

Naoki's face, pressed up against his pillow as he slept soundly popped into her head. She could still feel his arm across her waist, like he was using her as a life preserver in a stormy sea, feel the veins in the back of his hands with her own. "No," She lied. "He's cleaned up his act a little, I think."

"Good," Thomas said. "That's good. I don't want anyone making life hard for my girl."

"No, not hard." She looked out the window at the sun that was still making its way into the sky. "Just interesting."


	15. Chapter 15

"Do anything fun last night?"

Naoki didn't turn from the coffee cart in the employee break room as he stirred powder cream and sugar into the lukewarm liquid. It was a bad substitute for the fresh pot of coffee he had at his place, but the hangover from last night pounded in the space behind his eye sockets in a hard, painful cadence.

He was smacked on the back, and subsequently squeezed the packet of creamer all over the sleeve of his lab coat. "Irie?"

"Eh?" He grunted as he dusted the creamer off of his arm, trying not to fan the ember of annoyance in his chest into full on flame of aggravation.

"Anything fun?" Dr. Kawakami, a good surgeon with the social capabilities of a desk lamp snorted with a laugh. He was new to Tonan, and Naoki had a feeling that he was not informed yet of the fact that Naoki didn't talk to anyone. _Especially_ about his personal life.

"Why would I tell you what I did last night?" Naoki looked at the pudgy, balding doctor like he was trying to disintegrate him with his mind.

Dr. Kawakami made a nervous noise. "I was just asking because the hematoma on your hand. You know, just making small talk."

Naoki regarded him for a second and then looked at the bruise that covered three out of four knuckles, and then went back to making coffee. "I don't do small talk."

"Oh, lay off of him, Irie." Dr. Takahashi said from one of the tables that the employees used to eat their lunches at. He had his legs crossed and a beaten up crossword puzzle book sat open in front of him. "He's just being nice. You do remember nice, right?"

Naoki scowled. Dr. Takahashi and him were in the same class in medical school. He was one of the only doctors that knew him before everything happened. Back when he was happy. Back when the world didn't feel so heavy. He leaned down so Dr. Kawakami and him were at the same height, so close that Naoki could see the fear in his eyes. _"You want to know what I did last night?"_ He growled.

"And then I was like 'There are two hundred and forty acres and you managed to back the truck int-,'" Naoki turned to see Reagan and her translator enter the break room. Her hair was pulled into a low bun on the back of her head and she was wearing the green scrubs of the surgical unit, her arms crossed over a medical chart at her chest. But her eyes lit up in a way that was new to Naoki when she spotted him, almost sparkled like the sea underneath a new morning sun. "Oh, hey!" She said. "I've been looking for you!"

Naoki felt the heat rise in his face, but he twisted it into a bemused scowl when he glanced over at Kawakami watching the blonde doctor with the same ferocity that a predator would watch his prey. "You have?"

She smiled wide, her eyes flashing mischievously and handed over the medical chart she was holding. "I got you a present."

"A present?" Confusion making his voice ring high.

"Only if you're up to it."

He flipped the cover of the chart and started scanning the page, digesting every word. He found the profile. A girl, eighteen months. But the field where the diagnosis should've been was blank. "What is it?"

"That's part of the present." She said, lacing her fingers together underneath her chin, like she was going to burst with emotion at any second. _Kotoko used to do that._ The stab of regret and sorrow shot through Naoki's chest, making his breathing hitch. Naoki dropped his eyes back to the chart, hoping that Reagan didn't notice. "Meet me in OR two at noon."

"Why are you doing this?" He asked suddenly, feeling a deflating balloon.

"Because," She shrugged and started for the door, Kazuki following quickly behind. "That's what friends do. OR two at noon! Don't forget."

He watched her leave, the chart still flipped open in his hands. He was confused, but there was another part of him, a warmth in his chest, like being able to gulp in air after breaking the surface of the ocean. It was an alien emotion that he couldn't put his finger on. It wasn't until Takahashi started laughing, and Kawakami nervously joined in that he snapped out of his daze.

Naoki glanced over at Takahashi giggling like a fool. "I had my doubts." He said as he pulled off his wire glasses and rubbed them on his lap. "But you actually _do_ remember nice."

Naoki scowled. "Shut up." He picked up his coffee and headed out of the employee lounge, his eyes tracing down to the folder Reagan gave him. He realized the emotion he felt. That sudden flood of release.

 _Relief._

* * *

Reagan tried to look nonchalant as she flipped open one of the charts on the nurses' station counter, her hands in the pockets of her scrubs. To her dismay, it was all in Japanese. She pushed it off the stack and flipped open another one and came to the same dilemma.

 _This is frustrating._ Reagan was going to do another DHCA lesson today, but she found out a good majority of the doctors were out for the cherry blossom festival, leaving only a skeletal crew. She decided it wasn't worth teaching to only a couple of people, and decided instead to try and wiggle her way onto a case. After spending the night sleeping six inches from a person whose mind was trying to kill him, she grew hungry for medicine. _Tangible_ medicine. Physiology and diseases that were touchable and fixable, instead of a sorrowful look in the eyes or self-inflicted wounds on arms. She _knew_ medicine. She could _handle_ medicine.

Psychology, she was finding out, was something she was struggling with.

She scanned the hand-scribbled kana of charts, trying to pick out anything that would lead her getting in on a juicy surgery, but all she saw were characters and characters of a language she couldn't even comprehend. "Why did I waste seven years on Spanish?" She groaned and flipped the chart close. It was futile, at this rate, she would be happy to do an appendectomy. A tonsil removal. Heck, she would sit in the emergency department and do sutures for fun. She was getting so antsy to get over an operating table that she felt like her head was going to explode.

"Can I be of some assistance?" Reagan looked over to her interpreter Kazuki, his reddish hair shining under the fluorescent lights. She turned and put both hands on his shoulders, making him tense up and look at her like she was going to eat him.

"I need a surgery, Kazuki." She said and picked up a chart. "Any surgery. Please. I'm going nuts over here."

"Well…" He started, straightening out his shirt that she had wrinkled up. "I overheard the Chief talking about a case…"

Reagan could feel herself salivate a little. "Okay, go on."

"It's a little girl that has been sent here from the Nagano Prefecture. She's been seizing suddenly and they can't figure out why." A confused expression crossed his face. "I'm not a doctor, so I'm unsure the details, but-,"

"I need her chart." Reagan said, grabbing on to Kazuki again and re-wrinkling the sleeves of his shirt. "Can you get me her chart?"

"Well, actually…"

"What?"

"They were going to give it to Dr. Irie, since he's the pediat-,"

Reagan felt herself freeze up. She wanted medicine. _Medicine_. Not psychology. Not panic attacks or depression or addiction. She didn't want human fallacy messing with her medicine. _Her_ medicine. "But if she's seizing, that's neurology." She said a little harsher than she meant to.

A pained expression crossed Kazuki's face. "Well, yes but she's only eighteen months… _itai!_ Dr. Dunn, you're squeezing my arms."

Reagan let go of her interpreter and ran her hands on her face. The last time she went into surgery with Naoki, she kicked him out of the operating room. She wasn't so sure if the second time around would go any better. On the other hand, while Naoki had to drag along his baggage wherever he went, he was a pretty decent surgeon, especially when it came to children. Reagan could do children, but she wasn't as trained as a pediatric surgeon.

Seizing without knowing what it was. She had a case back in LA that was similar. There wasn't anything apparent in the MRIs, even when they spiderwebbed the cerebral cortex up with dye. They had to go in blind and she remembered…

 _Oh my god._

She looked up to see the Chief, his hands clasped behind his back and his white tennis shoes squeaking on the floor as he made his way down the hall. Without thinking about it, Reagan grabbed onto Kazuki's wrist and ran up to the Chief, cutting him off in the hallway. His brows pulled together in confusion as he looked from face to face.

"Chief, I need to talk to you about a case that could be Tonan's first DHCA procedure." She inhaled deeply. "And I need Dr. Irie on it."

* * *

The dining room of the restaurant was dimly lit, ambient lighting that glowed softly, making everything warm and kind of fuzzy. It made eyes appear demurer, it made time go slow, and it made it so that the only thing you could think about was the person in front of you and the plate of delicious food you were eating. Kotoko would've thought it would be romantic. And it probably was, you know, if you had someone to share the romance with. Now, though, it made things appear murky and dark, like trying to eat in a broom closet.

Her udon in front of her smelled good, but the knots in her stomach kept her from feeling hunger. She swirled the broth around with her spoon, watching the tiny whirlpools ripple across the surface.

"If you sigh anymore, you will completely deflate." Kin-chan said with a small laugh as he wiped dishes from behind the sushi counter she was sitting at. He was wearing the white uniform of a cook, his hat sliding forward a little on his head.

"I feel deflated." She said, turning back to her soup. "Like a popped balloon."

"Hey," He said. "I know it's been a couple months now, but if you need to talk about anything, I'm right here."

She looked up at her best friend. He was leaning his hands on the table, the abandoned plate he was drying in front of him. He always looked at her like she was the only thing in the world, like nothing else could captivate his attention. She diverted her eyes. "It's nothing."

He snorted a little and picked up his towel. "If it's nothing, why are you here instead of at home, eating dinner with your husband?"

Kotoko's mouth went dry. She should've been at home making dinner, but she would've only been making dinner for herself. Irie-kun barely came home from the hospital nowadays. And when he was, he didn't eat and sleep. He was growing gaunt and thin, circles formed underneath his eyes purple like grape jelly. It was like having ghost, shadows and whispers, passing through walls without speaking.

The grief became an elephant that she couldn't speak of, a subject that was always on the tip of her tongue, an obstacle she had to force words around. It was like trying to cover gunshot wound with a Band-Aid. But yet, they've survived for months like this now.

"Kinnosuke," Her father came from the kitchen, wearing the typical blue uniform of master sushi chefs. "Leave Kotoko alone while she is trying to eat."

"It's okay," Kotoko waved off with her hand. "He's not bothering me. I like the company."

"If Naoki actually took care of you, you wouldn't have find company with other people." Kin-chan muttered to him as he violently wiped down a plate and set it down.

"Kinnosuke," Her dad scolded. "That's not your place."

"Maybe not," He scowled. "But, it's true. What is he doing anyway? Does he even care about you anymore? Or is he so self-involved-,"

"Kinnosuke," The vein in her dad's forehead pop out like it did when he grew cross. "Go wash dishes in the back."

Kinnosuke threw a dirty look at her dad, and went to through the kitchen door, muttering things to himself. Kotoko just wished she could disappear. Maybe she could get sucked into the whirlpool of her soup, taken with the churning brown liquid until she disappeared forever. _He's grieving._ She thought. _That's what he's doing._ _He's never had to grieve before. It's crippling him._

"It's a hard journey," Her dad said as he resumed Kin-chan's dish duty and making her jump. He saw the confusion in her eyes. "Grieving, like you said. When your mom passed, I couldn't believe the world could keep spinning. I couldn't believe silence could be so loud."

Her mouth opened to answer. She didn't realize that she said her thoughts out loud. "What do I do? To help him? To help _us_?"

Her dad looked at her with sad eyes and gave a little sigh. "Be strong. Just try and be strong for when he can't be."

She looked down at her soup. _But who is going to be strong for me?_


	16. Chapter 16

Naoki changed into the blue surgical scrubs in the empty locker room and placed his folded white button-down and tie in a locker. The scrubs had short sleeves, so he always took his time getting dressed and scrubbing in so nobody noticed the train tracks of scars that zig-zagged their way up and down his arms.

He glanced down at them and wondered, for a second, what the patients and the parents and the family members would think if they knew that underneath the surgical gown and gloves and scrubs were scars that he put there himself. What would they think if they knew while he was fixing them, he was slowly destroying himself?

 _They would think that you are a monster._

Naoki shivered and slammed the locker door close, loud enough to echo off the walls. Loud enough to momentarily kill the voice that tore across his mind. He started for the wash room and saw Reagan already there, using a little brush to scrub underneath her nails, her eyebrows pulled together with concentration.

He started scrubbing his own hands next to her, working the soap all the way to his elbows. The only sound in the room were the faucets running and Naoki's pulse in his ears. Reagan didn't look at him or acknowledge him in any way. Her eyes moved back and forth over her hands, like she was ready something, thinking hard about something. "Is there a diagnosis yet?" He asked quietly, watching Reagan snap out of her deep thoughts, her eyes wide as she noticed him.

He watched her glance down at his arms and then back up at his face. "No," She answered as they both turned off the water with their elbows and grabbed sterile towels. She smiled as she donned her surgical gown. "But, that's why we are here."

They entered the operation room to a group of scrub nurses and an anesthesiologist working over the table in the middle of the room. The light above head was bright as it bathed everything in a bright white light. One nurse was unpacking a cooler of ice onto a cart.

"Naoki," She said as a nurse was snapping a glove on her. "You ready to save this little girl?"

Reagan felt like the main star on a Broadway play every time she entered an operating room, moving and dancing a choreographed dance to only receive either applause or get tomatoed in the face at the end. Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest was a song and a dance she knew by heart, though, and while she was still absolutely careful with every step, she knew if she had to she could probably do it backwards, blindfolded, and while in a coma.

The audience of Reagan's performance today was tiny girl that was dwarfed by the metal head brace and endoscopy machine. She looked like a doll, her eyelashes fluttering with activity above her. Reagan moved to cardiopulmonary bypass machine and played with the settings so the temperature was on the main screen.

"Dr. Irie," She motioned to Naoki who was frozen in the middle of the room. And he moved slowly around the table to stand next to her. "DHCA will give us ample time to do exploratory surgery to figure out why this patient is having seizures." She explained.

"D-do you think that I'm ready to do DHCA?" Nerves and anxiety made his voice shaky and small behind his mask.

"You're the only one who's read my whole work," She smiled and placed her gloved hand on top of his. "In an evening. You're more than ready. And I'll be right here for you. You ready?"

"Okay," He said and then again more firmly. "Okay, I'm ready."

"Alright!" She said. "Let's save lives, y'all!"

* * *

Recalling memories for Naoki was almost like flipping through one of his mom's photo albums. He could see Reagan's handwriting, the way she popped g's and y's with a bend at the end, or the typefaced documents in the crisp, white computer paper, or the glossiness of the medical journal as clear and as if he was staring at right now.

He moved around the patient, starting the cardio-pulmonary bypass and then turning on the dialysis machine to take some blood away from her to be recycled into her later when she warms up. He check-listed each item, mentally crossing them off as he checked and double-checked each item. Naoki looked up to make sure her vitals were good before turning to Reagan. "I think she's ready." He said quietly.

 _Is she?_

 _Be careful._

He looked down at the little girl, tubes tracking in and out of her. _She looks like Kotomi._

 _Don't kill her too._

Anxiety spiked hard in Naoki's chest, making his pulse beat hard against the side of his skull, making the rusty knife of regret twist in his middle. Reagan moved to turn on the cooling agent and he almost leapt to stop her. "Wait!"

"What's wrong?" She asked, her wide green eyes the only thing he could see above her surgical mask.

"I just…" He inhaled sharply. "I just…"

"Hey," She said firmly, her eyes flashing as her hand flipped on the cooling agent. "You can do it, okay?"

Reagan turned on the CPB machine and the nurses started packing icepacks around the girl's body. They both watched the monitor as her temperature decreased. He watched the numbers slowly fall, _34…32…29…_ and gave a silent prayer that everything would run smooth. He closed his eyes, and tried to push the itching doubt that he was going to end this girl instead of save her.

A squeal from the EEG machine made his eyes pop back open, making his heart skip a beat. He had reached a flatline, which is what they needed. He nodded and Reagan switched the CPB machine so that it took over the function of the girls' heart and lungs and then hit the timer so it started its countdown from forty minutes.

"Okay," She said. "We have reached clinical death. What's next Dr. Irie?"

 _Don't kill her too._

* * *

Reagan moved out of the way to take over monitoring the girl's temperature and vitals and let Naoki do the fun part of finding what was wrong with her. He slowly moved the camera of the endoscope into her skull cavity and watched the screen for any sign of abnormalities.

She inhaled a deep breath and watched the timer tick down the seconds. _He was doing it. Naoki was doing DHCA._

 _They were doing it. Together._

A radiating warmth made her chest feel like it was on fire, and she tried to imagine this is what it felt to skydive or base jump or stand and the alter and say 'I do' while staring at the person you love. She found joy in medicine, sure, but this was more than that. This was watching your child take their first steps. Or watching a bird take off and fly for the first time.

It was like watching your friend find their voice, only to climb on top of a mountain and shout for joy.

She found thrill watching Naoki succeed, watching him defy his doubts and fears.

"I'm not seeing anything."

Reagan was snapped from her daze and looked at the clock. They had twenty-five minutes left. She squinted hard. That couldn't be right. The seizing must've been caused by _something._ Naoki's gaze was fixed hard on the screen as he moved the tiny camera around the spiderwebbing second layer of the meninges of the girl's brain. "Can you get to the pia mater?"

"Not without an incision, no." His voice was on edge. And while she couldn't see his face, she could see the anxiety flash in his eyes.

"It's okay," She said. "Let's get some dye in there and see if that helps."

"Why are we going in blind like this?"

"Because it's sometime small enough that an MRI couldn't pick it up."

"How do you know it's even on the brain." He said between gritted teeth. "Seizures could be caused by anything: allergies, drug reactions, hormone imbalances."

Reagan moved to stand next to Naoki's elbow. Nurses moved in tandem around the surgical table, a harmony of medicine and skill. "This isn't time to panic." She said calmly.

"I only have twenty minutes left before we have to start warming her back up."

"You have to get under the pia mater." She guided. "You need a clear picture of what's going on."

"But-,"

"Naoki," She snapped, the warmth in her chest replaced itself with a heat that felt more like popping fireworks. "Stop _doubting_ yourself for ten seconds."

"I can't," He started to back off the endoscope handles. "I can't."

"You can and you will." She said. "Prove it to yourself that you can."

He gave a terse sigh and grabbed the handles again. He moved and made the tiniest incision in the meninges, maneuvering the camera over the surface of her brain. With bated breath, they watched as the camera focused in on something small, a tiny abnormality as small as a head on a needle. It was so small, she almost missed it. "What is that?" Naoki asked as he tried to make the focus clearer on it.

Reagan looked over at the CPB, feeling her heart drop in stomach. "We need to turn off the blood pump machine." She said, panic making her voice high. "Whatever you do, don't move suddenly."

"What do you mean? Of course I'm-,"

"That's a Charcot–Bouchard aneurysm." She breathed, her voice in her throat, her heart as still as the little girl's on the table. "One wrong move, and she's going to hemorrhage."

* * *

Kotoko threw her keys on the table that sat next to the door in the genkan and stepped out of her shoes. It was dark and quiet and cold. The house gave almost like a sigh as she closed the door behind her, like it was tired of seeing the sadness.

Like it was tired of the silence.

Kotoko wanted to crawl under the covers and sleep. Let the blanket surround her like a cocoon of warmth. Like it was the safest place on Earth.

She could see the the soft glow radiating from the kitchen. _I must've left it on before I left for the restaurant._ She started to cross through her dark living room, on the pursuit to turn it off and then head to bed. It was so dark, though, that she ran into a leg before she saw it.

"Irie-kun!" She shrieked surprised, and stepped back, almost tripping again onto her coffee table. A glass bottle fell over and clattered against the tile and Irie-kun startled awake. "What are you doing out here?"

She fished around and found the lamp next to Naoki's chair and turned it on. Naoki had a bottle of beer in his hand and there were a couple on the lamp table next to him and a couple on the floor. His eyes, bloodshot and blurry, rolled around until they focused on her. His hair was unkempt and he was still wearing his work clothes, his tie hanging loose around his neck. "Kotoko?" He slurred and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Are you _drunk_?" She asked and pulled the bottle out of his hand before he tipped it all over his lap. _It was empty._ "How long have you been here?"

"No, no." He stood up, to only teeter and then sit down heavily again. His eyes rolled again before they slid shut and his head tipped against his arm.

Kotoko sat down on the coffee table in front of her very inebriated husband. He wasn't one to get drunk. He almost never drank. He didn't like it dulling his senses. _She_ would be the one to get drunk and then _he_ would carry her home and put her into bed. _What do I do?_ She flailed and realized that she was still holding the bottle. She focused on the label for a second. _Just try and be strong for when he can't be._ That's what her father said. How was she going to be strong for him now?

She placed the bottle on the table next to her and stood up, gently shaking Naoki by the shoulder. "Irie-kun," She whispered in front of him. There were deep, dark circles under his eyes, the color of a sunset right when it faded into night. The color of the sea during a storm. His lips were chapped and bit, a nervous habit they she hadn't noticed before. _Or a nervous habit that just started._ "Irie-kun, you should get into bed."

His eyes snapped open. "No," He said suddenly, his eyes darting around. He got to his feet and wobbled in the direction of his study." "I have to find it. I have to find it."

"Find what?" Kotoko followed on his heels.

"The cure." He slurred, tripping and catching himself on the entryway into kitchen. "I have to find it. I can't-,"

Kotoko reached out and grabbed his hand hard, stopping him in his tracks. "Stop it, Irie-kun!" Tears constricted her throat. She couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't take seeing him like this. Her father told her to be strong. But how could you be strong when your whole world was being ripped to shreds in front of your eyes. "You're killing yourself." She yelled, tears flowing onto her cheeks. "I can't lose you too."

"But-,"

"No!" She cut him off, feeling her hands ball into tight fists. "Finding a cure isn't going to bring her back! Just stop already!"

His eyes flashed angrily and he stumbled towards her a little. "What should I _do_ then? I can't breathe, Kotoko. I can't think. I can't sleep." His gaze dropped to the floor. "All I hear are cries. _Her_ cries. It's driving me crazy."

Kotoko felt herself fall to her knees in front of her husband. She held his hand like it was a safety raft in a tsunami. _Just try and be strong for when he can't be._ "You don't have to do anything." She answered and looked up. "You're allowed to be sad. You're allowed to be _human."_

He jerked his hand out of her grip, his expression going cold. "Humans don't kill their daughters." He turned around and stumbled into his office, slamming the door hard behind him, leaving Kotoko on her knees in their living room, a million questions in swimming her head as she tried to catch her breath.

It might've been the low lighting, but she could've sworn she saw tears in his eyes.

* * *

 **So, lots of back and forth for the next chapter, you know the drill. Also, you guys should check out the person that cussed me out in the reviews. I don't think I've been yelled at that fiercely over a fanfiction before, and I wrote for _Star Wars._ I'm proud of you for making it 14 chapters, though! You the real mvp!**


	17. Chapter 17

Naoki could see his knuckles growing white as he gripped the handles of the endoscope. His shoulder blades hurt from being frozen in the same position and he gritted his teeth so hard that he could hear them grind together in his head.

One false move. One twitch or tremble or slip and it was all over for this little girl.

 _Don't kill her too._

He squeezed his eyes shut for just a second. He couldn't breathe. Or think. Reagan said he could do it. _She said._ She was wrong. He couldn't do it. He shouldn't have even come. Why did she do this to him?

 _You are going to kill her too._

"Naoki," She said gently, like a whisper to a sleeping child. He opened his eyes to fifteen minutes left on the clock, with the numbers spinning down so fast, they blurred together until Naoki couldn't recognize them anymore. "You're going to have to cut off the blood source."

"But-,"

"No," She cut him off, her voice fierce and her eyes shimmering underneath the operating room light. "I'll guide you, okay? You're going to be fine." She moved to his elbow, so close that he could feel the warmth radiate off of her. The same warmth he shared only hours before as they laid in bed. Then it was comforting, soothing, like laying in the summertime sun. He didn't want it to end.

Now it felt suffocating.

"You're going to find the neck." She said hushed, her own breath caught in her throat. "Find the source of the blood supply."

He uncurled his aching fingers from the endoscope handle and maneuvered it a couple millimeters, trying to find the source that supplied the time bomb that laid unnoticed in this girl's head.

"There it is," Reagan pointed to the screen above them at a tiny, inconspicuous coil. It was so small; it was like trying to find a speck of dust in a haystack. He marveled for a second that Reagan was able to find it, giving him more proof that there was a lot more to her than what showed on the surface. "Okay, clamp it down." She said as she grabbed a pair of precision clamps from a scrub nurse and started to affix a elgiloy clip at the end. "And I'll tie it."

"But-," He started between his clenched teeth. _One false move and it's all over for this girl._

She looked up from him, her eyes flashing like they did the last time they performed a surgery together. When he almost killed that boy. But, instead of just pure, fiery anger behind her big green eyes, he saw something else. Another emotion. _Hope._ "Naoki, you can do this." She breathed. "I _believe_ in you."

He watched the screen as he clamped down the neck of the artery that fed the aneurysm, watching with bated breath as it expanded just slightly, like a balloon being blown up, but didn't pop. Reagan moved into his space, making his side-step a little as she skillfully maneuvered the precision clamps and clipped the vein with a piece of metal that was designed to suffocate the aneurysm. Naoki sucked in air like he had just spent the last hour underwater. A collective sigh went out from the team. The suspense alleviated, the end to this story revealed.

The timer dinged, signaling the end of their window in DHCA.

Reagan looked up at him, her green eyes shining over the edge of her surgical mask. "Naoki," She breathed, an affinity in her voice that he had never heard before. "You did it."

 _But you couldn't save Kotomi._

 _You couldn't save Kotoko._

* * *

Kotoko watched the brown liquid of the coffee steam up the inside of the pot. The early morning sunshine lit up her kitchen from the inside out. It was a beautiful spring day, and spring was her favorite season. She should've felt as light as the pale blue sky. She should've felt as happy as the first blades of grass peaking through the snow. She should've felt as warm as the sun on bare shoulders.

But she just felt lonely and cold.

She waited until the coffee was done brewing to find Irie-kun. Sometimes she found him splayed on the sofa in his office, his face pressed against the arm of the couch as exhaustion forced him to sleep. Sometimes he slept at his desk over his books. Sometimes he was still awake, his desk lamp still on, oblivious that the morning sun had risen.

Kotoko was unsure how she was going to find Irie-kun after last night. Do geniuses get hangovers? She tapped her knuckle on the study door and let herself in. It was empty. Sometimes he left without her noticing, without saying goodbye. She missed the days where he would wait on the genkan for her and Kotomi. He would cup her face in his hand, looking at her like she was the only thing he could see on the planet, his brown eyes shining. It would only be for a second, but for Kotoko it felt like an eternity and it was one of her favorite parts of the day.

Now it was like they were ghosts haunting the same house. Ghosts not caring who saw through them anymore.

Trash and bottles and books splayed open covered all surfaces of the room. Kotoko took the opportunity to pick up the mess, collecting empty bottle after bottle of beer. _Where did he even get these?_ She wondered. She was the one that did all the grocery shopping. She juggled the collection in her arms as she made her way around his desk, straightening the lamp that sat on its side and the pencil cup that had been pushed off the desk onto the floor. She flipped books close and stacked them in a pile on one side of the wood surface.

She opened a side drawer and found an empty food container that was in an advanced state of decay, the smell hit her in the face like a slap and she picked it up and threw it in the rubbish bin next to the desk. Underneath the trash was a collection of pill bottles. Some had caps, some did not. Some were empty. Some weren't.

Kotoko heard the clang of the beer bottles hitting the ground before she realized she had dropped them all. Ice blasted its way through her veins and she picked up one of the pill containers, her fingers feeling numb like she had just spent hours in the snow. Like it was a phantom limb she didn't control anymore. _Diazepam._

 _What are you hiding from me, Irie-kun?_ She felt tears choke her out as she gripped the bottle tight enough to turn her knuckles white. _Just be strong for when he can't be._ That's what her father said. Like it was easy or something.

 _How can I be strong when I feel so weak?_

* * *

After overseeing the DHCA warm-up, they both left to let the scrub nurses stitch her up. They both made their way to the empty wash room and without thinking about it, Reagan launched herself against Naoki. _He did it. He did it._ She embraced him around the shoulders, and she could feel him stiffen underneath her. "You did it!" She giggled as she breathed in the antiseptic on his surgical gown. "I knew you could do it!"

"Get off of me _._ " He growled and pushed her off. " _Urusai_."

Reagan started to rip off her surgical gown and wash her hands. Naoki joined in next to her, his hair messy from the cap. "Dr. Irie, you are the first successful Japanese doctor to perform deep hypothermic circulatory arrest," Reagan held up her wet fist to her mouth and pretended it was a microphone. "What are you going to do now?" She jammed it in his face and watched as he rolled his eyes and turned the water off with his elbows.

"I'm going home." He said and dried off. His tone and attitude had changed, like he was almost reluctant to be happy. _Regretful_ to be happy.

"Oh, come on, we _have_ to celebrate." She dried off and followed him on his heels.

"I'm not the celebrating type."

"Let me buy you a beer or something."

"There's nothing to celebrate." He said. "I did my job."

Annoyance flared red hot in Reagan's chest. "I don't know what happened. I don't really frickin' care at this point. But, just an FYI, this pity-party thing gets _old_. You're allowed to be happy for yourself, you know." She snapped. He froze with his hand on the door that led to the locker room. Reagan could see the purple and pink zig-zagging scars that marked the skin of his forearms and gulped a little, regretting her off-handle words.

"I'm not asking for pity." He said. "I'm just asking to be left alone."

Reagan shivered. _Leave me alone._ That's what he said on the bridge too. If she left him alone, though, what would you do? _What would the demons have you do? If I left you alone for too long, would you try to kill yourself again?_

"Do you…" She started quietly. "Want to talk about anything?"

"No," He said and pushed the door open and watched it slam against the opposite wall. "I don't want to ruin your day with my _pity-party."_

"Naoki, that's not what-," She started to reach out for him, take his hand. But he walked away without turning, without acknowledging. She watched the door of the men's locker room swing shut. She had so many things to say to him and a million questions for him too, but they always came out wrong. She always felt like she did in her dreams, just a moment too late. But only one thing bubbled to her lips, even though there was no one in the wash room to hear her anymore.

"Just let me be your friend."

* * *

Kotoko waited for what felt like hours in front of the door. She had waited before for Naoki. Heck, the beginning of their relationship consisted of her waiting behind the bike rack for three hours to give him her note. She was patient. She was good at waiting.

She gripped the bottle of pills, the blue and yellow pills that cascaded together, making a rattling sound against the plastic. She had waited before. But she had never waiting for him like this. Never under these circumstances. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, and then pain made tears form in her eyes.

Irie Naoki has done a lot of things throughout their tumultuous relationship. He's yelled at her, he's insulted her, he went out of his way to make her jealous. He's kissed her without her permission.

But he has never lied to her. He's never hid things from her.

Especially, something like _this._

She looked down at the pill bottle watching the words on the label go blurry with her tears. She felt like she was falling apart at the seams. She felt like she was shattering and each piece that fell only revealed the void inside of her.

The door clicked open and she looked up at Irie-kun. His tired, pain expression twisted into confusion when he saw her standing there, tears streaming down her face. "What's…going on?"

"What is this?" She spat venom and held out the bottle, the pills rattling inside. "Why are you keeping secrets from me?"

His expression changed again. A million emotions flashed in his eyes before he finally settled on anger. "You went through my desk?" He growled. "I didn't give you permission to go through my desk!"

"I don't need permission!" She yelled back, her voice breaking on the end. "I hate to remind you, but I am your _wife_! The mother of your _child_!"

Irie-kun recoiled, an emotion crossing over his face that threw Kotoko off. It was pain, sheer pain. Like her words stabbed him over and over. His eyes went crazy, wild, like he was breaking too.

 _Or like he was already broken._

"We don't have a child anymore!" He said and snatched the wrist of the hand that was holding the pills. His hands were cold and strong like iron. In a flash, he forced her arm above her head and twisted her wrist. The pills dropped from her hand and she heard the bottle clang against the tile.

"Irie-kun, you're hurting me!" She cried out in pain, and tried to jerk free.

"Don't." His face got close to hers and she could smell the sour scent of alcohol on his breath. She could see the bloodshot in his eyes. "Go. Through. My. Desk. Again." He dropped her arm.

Kotoko dropped to her knees, letting the tears fall freely as she cradled her hurting arm against her chest. She didn't feel like she was shattering anymore. She was already shattered. Like a broken window in a tsunami, unable to contain the force outside. "Irie-kun," She cried, watching him pick up the bottle and slip it in his pocket. "Don't you love me anymore?"

He regarded her for a second, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled deep breaths, before turning to go through the living room. "Of course." He mumbled.

He didn't even answer her.

He's never lied to her. Until now.

* * *

 **It could be worse. They could be the Saeki family from the grudge. Now, that's what you call 'domestic dispute.'**


	18. Chapter 18

**So, it does get better, you people who keep saying this story is super sad. Seriously. Maybe. Perhaps. Probably not. But it could? I don't know. What I do know is that I love your reviews. So, enjoy and review pls!**

* * *

Naoki rubbed his shoulders as he walked through the mostly empty hallways of the pediatric ward. He was the resident pediatric surgeon, but it was actually pretty rare to find him loitering on his own hallway. He wasn't like the other pediatric doctors, who would carry lollipops in the pockets of their lab coat, or wear stuffed animals pinned to their lapels. He didn't exude unadulterated optimism, sugarcoating everything. He didn't spend his free time in the playroom, reading stories to children with lines blooming from their chest, or with masks permanently tied to their face.

Actually he was almost the exact opposite of those doctors. They loved the ped ward. He _hated_ it.

It wasn't entirely his fault, though. The constant reminders of what could've been, they haunted him. Echoes of Kotomi were in the eyes of the kindergartener with the cough or the way the toddler with the broken leg would look up at her mother. The cartoon characters on the walls, with their brightly painted faces turned Naoki's stomach if he looked at them for too long. He also didn't care for parents approaching him in the hallway, the deep concern in their eyes, when they asked about their sick child. _At least you have a child to worry about._ He would want to scream at them. _I'm working to save your child when I couldn't even save mine._

The pediatric ward was on a different hallway, and it was the last place anyone would suspect him, giving him time to get away. To clear his head.

He turned the corner and the bright paint on the walls turned into a subdued pink. The hallways grew quiet, tranquil even. His breath caught in his throat as he looked up to the large window of the nursery, bassinets lined in neat rows with a swaddled, tiny faces sleeping in each one.

 _"Which one is she?" Shigeo approached Irie as he sat in front of the nursery window. Naoki, even though he had spent the last thirty-six hours at Kotoko's side and could probably collapse on command with exhaustion, felt like a giddy child. He felt like he was walking on the clouds. He was a father. A_ father. _He couldn't believe it, but a tiny little face peaking over the edge of her blanket reminded him every second he spent looking at her._

 _He pointed to the corner bassinet, without taking her eyes off of her. Kotomi's face scrunched up almost on cue and then a big yawn split across her face. "She's right there."_

 _"She's beautiful."_

 _Naoki pressed his hands to the window of the nursery. "She is, isn't she?"_

"I love nurseries." He jumped at the sound and looked down at Reagan, who had taken to staring in the nursery next to him. She had changed out of her scrubs and was now in a pair of jeans and a blouse, her purse slung across her shoulders. "So much innocence in one room."

He dropped his hands from the window and wiped his face quickly with the back of his sleeve. He didn't even realize that he had started crying. "What do you want?" _How did you find me here?_ Is what he really wanted to ask.

She opened her shoulder bag and pulled out a pile of navy. "I washed it." She shrugged and handed over his cardigan from last night.

He took the sweater from her. He had totally forgotten that he had lent it to her. That seemed like such a long time ago. "Thank you."

"I'm sorry, too." She looked into the nursery. "For what I said earlier."

Naoki didn't respond. His greatest fear with Reagan was that she would use what she knew about him against him. That one day he would come in without a position anymore because she went to the Chief. It _was_ that. It _still_ was that. But now there was something more. Like, at any moment she was wake up and see the cracks and leave him forever, running as far away as she could get. She would see that he was a lost cause. She would figure out he was a waste of time.

And he would lose his only friend.

 _You will lose her too._

His breath caught in his throat and all of a sudden the walls felt like they were closing in on him. He felt two inches tall. He felt like he was drowning, and he couldn't cry out to be saved.

He felt a small hand grip his and he looked down at Reagan's big green eyes swimming with concern. "Come on." She said, a small smile crossing her lips, the concern transforming into humor. "Let's not taint all this innocence."

* * *

The phone rang, making Kotoko jump out of her skin, making her start out of sleep. The night was quiet and calm. It was almost too calm, but the weatherman said that there was a storm on the horizon. She picked up her alarm clock. 3:20 AM. Her heart skipped a beat and a million horrors flashed through her head. She grabbed the ringing phone, the cradle flying from her side-table and hitting the floor.

"Hai," She gripped the receiver with both hands.

"Is this 'Irie Kotoko?'" A strange, gruff voice said at the other end.

"Yes…?" She pulled the phone away from her face and looked at it, and then slapped her cheek to make sure that she was not still asleep. It wasn't Irie-kun's parents, or her dad, or Irie-kun himself. She was completely awake. _Then why does this seem like a weird dream?_

"Your…err…husband asked me to call this number. He's needs to be picked up." The voice said.

"Picked up?" Kotoko repeated, feeling her brows come together. She absent-mindedly flexed her wrist, working out the bruises that reminded her that Irie-kun hurt her. Reminding her of the heartbreak of that afternoon.

"He's had a bit to drink."

Kotoko wrote down the address from the stranger calling her on a stray newspaper from Irie-kun's bedside. She started to undress from her pajamas and froze. _Why was she doing this?_ He had hurt her. He had betrayed her. She didn't owe him anything.

At the same time, she loved him. She would follow him to hell, if that's what he asked.

She kept reminding herself that as she walked down the empty sidewalk in the brisk early-morning air towards the address she was given. She turned and walked down the stairs to a basement-level business. The neon sign above the door read _Blue Bar_ and glowed with a soft intensity, lighting up the sidewalk. The dimly lit bar itself looked old and run-down, with its mismatched chairs and tables that looked like they should've been decommissioned awhile ago.

Naoki sat at one of these tables, his face pressed against its surface, his eyes closed. The bartender sat behind his bar, wiping down glass wear. Kotoko bowed to him with a small smile and gave quiet. "Sorry, sorry." Irie-kun was still dressed in his work shirt, his tie hanging loosely around his neck. Kotoko gave his shoulder a little shake. "Irie-kun." She said. "Irie-kun, let's go home."

 _I'm usually the one falling asleep._ She tried to shake him a little harder.

His eyes fluttered opened. "Kotoko," He breathed, his eyelids sliding shut. "I'm sorry."

"Can you stand?" She asked grabbed him by the shoulders, pushing him vertical and then pushing him to his feet. He teetered to the side and almost fell, and it took all of Kotoko's strength to keep him from falling all the way over. "Why are you so heavy?" She groaned under his weight.

She took position underneath his arm, keeping an iron grip around his waist and stumbled with him to the door. The brisk air bit the skin of her face and hands, the tip of her nose. It was too late for a cab and too early for a train. She groaned a little, but started with one foot in front of the other, trying to go slow so that Irie-kun could keep up.

"Kotoko," He said, his head rolling on his shoulders. "Kotoko."

"What?" She asked, her voice snapping a little with irritation. She could be in her warm bed right now, underneath her covers. But instead she was walking her insanely inebriated husband down the street in the middle of the night in the cold.

"Koto-," He started again, but instead doubled over and threw up on the sidewalk. Kotoko turned the other way, her eyes closed tight, so she didn't have to watch, but kept one hand on his back so that she could catch him if he started to fall over. _Please let this night be over._ She prayed as she listened to Irie-kun vomit.

"Kotoko?" A new, lighter voice called out and she opened one eye to the shapely figure and long dark hair of Matsumoto Yuuko. She was wearing a business outfit of a skirt and blouse, but was wearing tennis shoes instead of heels.

"Matsumoto-san." Kotoko greeted and helped Irie-kun back into a standing position, and slipping his arm around her neck again. "I haven't seen you since college! What are you doing out so late?"

Her once love-rival looked Irie-kun up and down. "I work the night shift for my IT department." She answered. "Is Irie-san alright?"

 _He hasn't been alright for months._ But Kotoko put on her best smile and waved her hand around. "He's fine. Just indulged a little too much." Kotoko nodded. "I'm just getting him home and-,"

"Kotoko," He interrupted and started to lean to the side, almost forcing Kotoko off of her feet. "My head hurts…"

Matsumoto-san moved quickly to the opposite of Irie, taking position underneath his other arm. She gave Kotoko a look. "You lead the way."

"Oh, Matsumoto-san…" Kotoko started to protest, but then looked up at Irie-kun, who looked like he was going to be ill again if he didn't lay down soon. She started walking, Irie-kun sandwiched between them as they moved down the sidewalk into their neighborhood.

"I heard you quit nursing." Matsumoto-san said after a second.

Kotoko's face flushed red. She quit in her third trimester, when Kotomi pinched her sciatic nerve and she spent the last eight weeks of her pregnancy sitting on an ice pack, watching soap operas. She gave a nervous laugh. "Well, I got pregnant…"

"Oh," Matsumoto-san sounded surprised. "Boy or girl?"

Kotoko dropped her eyes to their feet, moving in tandem down the pavement. "A girl." She said quietly. "Kotomi."

"Oh, well, congratulations."

Matsumoto-san and Kotoko continued through the front door of their house, taking off their shoes at the genkan and then bending over to take off Irie-kun's shoes. They guided him to the couch and sat him down. He immediately curled up against the arm, his chin hitting his chest as he slept.

"He's really drunk, isn't he?" Matsumoto-san put her hands on hips. Kotoko looked up at the woman. She was as beautiful as she was when they were all in college, her hair draping over one shoulder.

Kotoko waved her hand around and laughed nervously. "No, no. He's just really tired from working and they've had him on nightshifts and…"

Matsumoto-san nodded. "Having a baby is exhausting too." She looked around, her eyes going wide. "Where is she? Can I hold her? I bet she's so cute! You know, being half-Naoki and all."

Kotoko laughed again, but her laugh quickly dissipated and she sat down heavily next to Irie-kun on the couch. She could feel the tears coming on and she tried her hardest to keep them from spilling. She tried her hardest to keep the storm from breaking free inside of her.

Matsumoto-san sat down on the coffee table across from them. "There is no baby, is there?"

"Not anymore." Kotoko said, feeling hot tears trail down her face. She sucked in a hard breath. "She passed away last November. She was eight months old."

"Oh, Kotoko." Matsumoto-san switched seats so that she was sitting next to Kotoko and put her arms around her shoulders. "I'm sorry. That must be so hard. I can't even imagine."

"No, you can't."

They both jumped and looked over at Irie-kun who had gotten to his feet. His hair was a mess and he swayed like he was being blown in a high wind, but his eyes were hard and cold.

Kotoko wiped her eyes and stood up. "Do you want some help to bed?"

"No. I got it." He shook his head and almost fell over. Kotoko moved to help him, but he shrugged her off and straightened up. Kotoko watched, but he made it up the stairs okay and waited until she heard the door slam shut before turning back to Matsumoto-san.

"He's taking it pretty hard?"

"Hard doesn't even begin to describe it."


	19. Chapter 19

**You guys want plot twists. I'll show you plot twists.**

* * *

"I thought we were getting beer." Naoki groaned as he was pulled slightly by the elbow by Reagan as they turned from the direction of the bar into the park. He had ditched his lab coat for his freshly laundered blue cardigan. It smelled like lilacs and Reagan's perfume. It smelled like the pillow she slept on the night before. It smelled like _her._

"We are! I'm just taking the scenic route." Reagan smiled up him. Her hand was warm against his arm, and her curls shined in the spring afternoon. "I want to show you the flowers, you know, the blossoms…"

"You know I grew up in Japan, right?" He asked. "I've seen the _ume_ every year."

"Will you please just humor me for once?" She sounded irritated, but her eyes sparkled mischievously.

They diverted on a small, hidden path that was canopied by plum blossom trees. The white flowers blanketed the the branches. Peaks of sun fought through the trees, illuminating the path. Petals swirled around them in the wind, catching in the breeze. It was like a scene out of a fairytale. Naoki stopped suddenly and breathed a short breath as he took everything in.

Reagan stopped too, and turned, a quizzical look on her face. "Everything okay?" She asked. Her hair blew around her face, framing her large green eyes.

"Yeah," He nodded, feeling his own hair blow in the breeze. "It's just…"

"It's nice, right?" Her hand slipped into his. The wind continued to blow around them, picking up blossoms, the sweet smell of the _ume_ permeating everything.

One blew into Reagan's curls, getting itself tangled in her wild hair. "You have a blossom…" He started and moved to pulled it out, his fingers lingering in her hair. For a moment their eyes locked. For a moment the only thing that Naoki could see were two green eyes watching him without misperception or hesitancy. Two eyes that saw _him_ instead of seeing through him like everyone else did. These two eyes looked at him like he was _human._

Without thinking about it, he moved his fingers so that they were wrapped into her hair and bent down, watching as the two green eyes flashed with surprise and then closed as he kissed her.

 _Don't get too close._

Too late.

* * *

Reagan froze under Naoki's sudden kiss. One moment he was pulling a flower out of her hair and then the next he was kissing her. One hand wrapped in her hair and the other found her waist and pulled her close. _This wasn't right._ Every inch of her screamed that this wasn't right.

But why did she feel so warm?

She found his waist and kissed him back, letting herself melt underneath his touch, defying all of her premonitions. Her skin felt like it was alive. Like every hair grew its own brain and was all screaming at the same time. She understood, now, the fireworks metaphor, but it was more than that. It was fireworks made out of the sweetest candy. Made out of the surface of the sun. It was like hanging from the edge of heaven, a high that couldn't be duplicated. It was a feeling she never wanted to end. A sensation that only lit her from the inside out.

Her fingers found his hand that was laced into her hair, cupping it with her own. Her fingers ran down his arm, down his waist.

Even though it was a moment she didn't want end, a million red flags were waving all at the same time. _He's an addict. He's an alcoholic. He's suicidal. Depression. Panic Attacks. Temper._ _Was this what she wanted?_ No. No. She wanted to be his friend, sure. But she didn't have feelings for him. This was crossing so many lines. So many walls were broken down with such a simple thing. _Then why do you like it so much?_

 _What about Thomas?_

A jolt of electricity shocked her as her boyfriend's face filled up her head and she pushed Naoki away, feeling her face flush hot and red. She pressed her fingers to her cheeks, trying to press feeling back into them at the same time, trying to process the fact that she _kissed_ the man she _saved from throwing himself off of a bridge just weeks ago_.

He cleared his voice and smooth down the sweater he was wearing. "Sorry about that." He mumbled. "I don't know why I did that."

She looked up at Naoki, his face was as flushed as hers and his lips were red and kissed. There was an emotion in his eyes. An emotion she didn't recognize. An emotion she couldn't put a finger on. She pushed it out of her mind and tried to play it off. Tried to forget the feeling of his skin underneath her fingertips. She felt a smile split her face. "I told you it was nice."

* * *

The sidewalks smelled chalky, like they did after it rained. She used to like the scent as she walked to school in morning, inhaling the fresh air. Or during college when she walked to her new classes, signaling the beginning of the spring semester. She smelled the rain in Akita, when she would visit her mother's grave with her father. The smell brought back so many memories. She closed her eyes as she walked and inhaled deeply.

Kotoko slung her umbrella on her shoulder as she tried to enjoy the smell of rain. She tried to enjoy the little things again, instead of picking at the negative, like how the puddles were staining her white socks or how the curls she put in her hair were starting to fall out with the humidity. She was trying to enjoy life again, even if it was the smallest thing, like the smell of concrete after the rain.

Irie-kun had left the house before she woke up. Again. She wondered where he went to for all hours on end. He couldn't always be at the hospital. There were other doctors that worked there. They would've noticed. He couldn't be drinking, although he did drink enough for the both of them nowadays.

She flexed her wrist and thought about the bottles of pills that she had found in his desk. If he was keeping a drug habit from her, what else could he be hiding? Did she want to know? Did she want to stumble down that path and only have it blow up in her face?

Only have _Naoki_ blow up in her face?

Tears prickled her eyes. She was still in shock that he hurt her. He had never touched her like that. What would he do if she continued to dig? Would he hurt her again?

But if she left him alone, what would he do to himself? How far did his grief go?

 _Just be strong for when he can't be._

A sign caught her eye and she slowed down in front of an unassuming gray building. Without thinking about it, she walked through the doors of the ward office, past the desk to the walls of pamphlets that addressed every situation from international adoption to enlisting in the military. Her eyes scanned the brightly colored documents, her heart caught in her chest. Before they rested on the section she was looking for.

 _Divorce._

 _Maybe_ , She slid a pamphlet on how to file out of its holder. _Maybe the strongest thing I could do is let him go._

* * *

Reagan pulled Naoki up over a hill that she thought was a way out of the park, and instead of more grass or more _ume_ trees or even the edge of the city leaking into nature, there was a gravesite. Pillars and pillars of stone rectangles reaching for the grey skies as far as she could see. "Oh," She breathed, her face going hot. _This isn't right._ She thought. This wasn't a place for a graveyard. It seemed so out of place.

She turned to Naoki, who had moved to stand next to her, his eyes scanning the horizon of headstones. The look in Naoki's eyes made Reagan feel like a million pounds. Like she could feel every inch of her own skin. Like she did in her nightmares. "Let's go back," She slid her hand into his. She wanted that warmth back. The sun in her chest. She wanted the fire back. "I'll buy you that beer, finally."

He shook his hand out of her grip. "I know this cemetery." He whispered, his voice catching in the breeze. He started down the hill towards the graves.

Reagan followed ten paces behind him as he walked down the path between the rows of graves. Her heart sunk lower and lower in her chest with each step she took. Naoki silently turned down one of the rows, the path turning from cement into stones.

Reagan looked at the headstones as they passed them. They were very uniform looking, some were a little wider and had two names. Some were straight pillars, set on platforms. Some had wooden sticks lining the back and some had names outlined in red on them. They all were about the same height, hip-level on Reagan.

Well, all except one.

It was like a miniature, a replica of the others. It sat underneath a blooming _ume_ tree, the blossom floating to the ground with the breeze. Its neighbor was a large gravestone with two names on it. Naoki dropped to his knees in front of them, his shoulders hunched like every inch of him hurt. Like he was shielding himself from invisible monsters.

The wind stood still, and all that moved was the white petals of the ume as they made their plunge to the ground. Reagan's heart caught in her chest, her pulse hot and loud in her ears.

"This is Kotoko, my wife." He pointed at the larger headstone. "And this is Kotomi, our daughter." He pointed at the smaller headstone. "This is my family." His voice broke on the end. "And they're gone. And its all my fault."

For two weeks Reagan had been asking what the world did to the man she found dangling off the edge of the bridge. For two weeks, she wondered what could drive someone to the point where the only way out was taking their own life. For two weeks, she had tried to decipher the mystery that was Irie Naoki.

Now that she knew, now that she understood, she wished she could take it all back. She wished that she had never wandered onto that bridge. She wished she didn't step off the plane. She wished she was back in California, ignorant, blissful, from the fact that a heart can hurt this much.

Reagan didn't know what to do. She couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She felt like she was on fire. She felt like she weighed a million pounds. She felt like she was being gagged, smothered, suffocated.

"You want to be my friend." He said. "But I can't have friends. I can't love people. Everyone I've ever loved is gone. And it's all my fault." He pressed his hands to the sides of his head. "It's all my fault." The desolation in his voice was painful, it pricked at Reagan's skin and brought tears to Reagan's eyes.

All she wanted was to throw her arms around Naoki. She wanted to press her face into his neck, breathe him in, and tell him that it was going to be okay. Tell him that she wasn't going anywhere. That he could start trusting the world again. She wanted to take his pain away. She wanted to hold him until they couldn't feel anything but the heat of each other.

But she didn't do that. She couldn't get herself to do that. She did the exact opposite.

She turned and ran. She ran as fast as she could go.


	20. Chapter 20

**some super happy, fluffy, fun-time stuff coming up baHAAAHAHA HAHA LOL lmao god I'm so funny**

* * *

He used to come to their graves everyday. And then everyday turned into every couple of days. And then that turned into once a week, until one day he could bare showing up. He couldn't bare looking at their names. He couldn't bare the fact that they were gone and he was still here and he didn't deserve any moment of it.

Naoki looked up to see that he was alone. Reagan had left him. He didn't blame her, he expected it. He expected it to be too much for her. But, at the same time, a part of him wished she had stayed. That she would've proved him wrong.

Something hard hit him in the chest, and he doubled over, feeling tears trace his face. He had done it, finally. He had laid it all out for someone. Everything. No lies, nothing hidden anymore. And she left him. The voices were right. He shouldn't have gotten close. Everyone he loves disappears.

 _It's all your fault._

 _You're all alone._

A wave of grief hit him, and then another and then another. It was like being stabbed over and over again in the middle, like being suffocated by cold fingers. All he wanted was to disappear. For the ground to split open and swallow him whole. For darkness to take him.

But, most of all, he wanted Reagan to come back. He wanted her to tell him that she made a mistake. She wanted to tell him that it was going to be alright, that he was going to make it through this.

But the only friends he had were the _ume_ trees and the voice inside his own head telling him to die.

He turned back to the graves and touched Kotoko's name, tracing it with his fingers before getting to his feet and stumbling himself home.

* * *

Reagan stopped running once the buildings stopped looking familiar, when she no longer could pick out familiar landmarks. She stopped against the outside of a convenience store and doubled over, her calf cramping from the sudden exertion.

 _What are you doing?_

She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead into the smooth concrete of the building. She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know what to do from here. All she knew was that the man that she thought she was starting to figuring out, she realized she knew nothing about. It was like trying to solve a trigonometry problem, when it was a bio-chemistry formula the whole time. Was that an excuse, though? She promised him. She promised that she would help him, that she would see him out of this alive. And in the last moment, she couldn't do it.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she felt tears hot on her face. _I'm a coward._ She thought and pressed herself away from the convenience store and started walking down the sidewalk. He counted on her and she let him down.

She turned the corner and stopped in her tracks. It was the same bridge. The same bridge she had found Naoki on her first day in Tokyo. The same bridge that haunted her dreams. She walked to the railing and look down. The gray water churned below. She closed her eyes and breathed in the sea and imagined her insides like the water.

She wondered what happened that day to bring him here, to bring him to this bridge. Did he visit his wife and daughter's grave? Did he see someone that looked like them at the hospital? Did he have a bad panic attack, a bad night? Was he high? Drunk?

Did she care?

 _I care about him._ She gripped her arms and looked down at the water. _I care so bad, it hurts._

But then why did she run?

Reagan couldn't answer that. She couldn't. She wanted to stay. Everything fiber of her being told her stay, but she ran anyway. She didn't even look back. She didn't even make sure he was okay. She just ran. It was weak. She was a coward.

 _I feel like I'm drowning and I can't find which way is up._ That is what he said. She understood that feeling now. She understood what it was like to not be able to find the surface, the air. She understood what it was like to feel like there was no more hope in the world.

* * *

Naoki stumbled into his apartment. He didn't even bother with his shoes on the genkan. He didn't care. What was the point? What was the point of anything? Grief and pain and anxiety beat hard against him, but there was something more than that. Something he's only felt a couple of times.

 _Desperation._

It felt like the wind blowing through him, but he couldn't take in enough oxygen. He felt like he was being crushed under a million tons of gravity, but his feet couldn't find solid ground.

And all he could hear was cries. The cries of an infant. The cries of his daughter.

He slammed his door closed. It was like his limbs were detached and they were just moving on his own as he walked to the kitchen and found half a bottle of vodka and then moved to his bed to find the bottle of pills on his table.

He looked at both of them. A peaceful feeling washed over him. The anxiety in his chest settled. The churning in his stomach stopped. The cries stopped. It felt so _right._

 _You know what to do._

He squeezed his eyes shut and sat down hard on the bed, letting both bottles slip out onto the floor. When he felt suicidal, the face of his mother would claw its way to the surface of his mind. _Could he do that to them? To his parents? To Yuki?_ What would they do when they found him? Would they cry? Would they miss him?

What about Reagan? Would she miss him?

 _Nobody will miss you._

 _Nobody will care._

Naoki pressed his hands against the sides of his head, trying to drown out the voice. He staggered to his feet and moved to his bathroom. It was painful, looking at his own reflection in the mirror. The crying grew so loud, echoing around every corner of his mind. He pressed his hands into his face, watching his reflection contort, watching his eyes grow dark. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to make it better.

 _But you know how to stop it from getting worse._

"Stop!" He balled his fist and sent it into mirror. It shattered around his arm, cutting deep into him. He pulled it back and looked at all the glass embedded into his skin, marveled at the blood oozing down his wrist towards his elbow. And then looked up at where the mirror was, where his face used to be.

 _See, nobody will miss you._

* * *

Kotoko looked at the pamphlets she swiped from the ward office as she waited for Irie-kun to get home. She didn't want to wait. She had made her decision and she didn't want to second guess herself. She was going to approach him as soon as he walked through the door. She was sure she wanted this. It was the best decision for the both of them. It would allow her to find herself, heal, and get back to life. It would allow him to work through his issues. It made sense.

Or, at least, that's what she kept telling herself.

The pamphlets were starting to wrinkle in her moist hands. She wished Naoki would get home so that she could get it over with. It felt like a Band-Aid that she had to rip off her leg when she was a kid. She just needed to get it over with.

She needed to get it over with before she lost her nerve. Before she backed out and kept living day after day in a loveless marriage.

Finally, the doorknob turned and she watched Irie-kun step through the door. He looked at her up and down and then gave a sigh. "What did I do now?"

"Irie-kun," She started. _Just like a Band-Aid._ "I want a divorce."

"What?"

"A divorce." She repeated, waving her pamphlets in the air. "If we are agreeable, then we can avoid family court and I think it's the best idea and-,"

"A divorce?" He repeated, slurring on the end of his words. _Is there ever a time where you are not drunk anymore?_ She thought. "You want to divorce me?" The disbelief in his voice grew with the volume.

"Yes, Irie-kun." She cowered against the wall of her living room as she watched him approach her, the crazy look in his eye that he had the night she confronted him about the pills. There was a moment where they both froze, their eyes locked together. And then Irie-kun did the unthinkable: he rose his hand in a flash. She crumpled the pamphlet in her fist and squeezed her eyes shut as she rose her arms to shield herself. "Please, don't hit me!" She prepared for the sting against her face, but it never came.

She opened her eyes and saw Irie-kun had dropped to his knees, his arms wrapped around his torso like he was trying to keep all of his grief buried in his chest. His face had twisted in a way that she couldn't comprehend. Grief and guilt and pain that she couldn't comprehend. "Irie-kun?"

"I'm sorry, Kotoko." His voice cracked on the end and she watched tears make hard track marks on his face. "I'm sorry I haven't been a good husband to you. I promise I will be better. I promise." He begged. "Please, please don't leave me."

Kotoko looked at the crumpled pamphlets, their bright cheery colors bleeding together with the heat of her hand. Everything seemed so silly now. She dropped them and then dropped to her knees in front of of her husband. _Her husband._ He wrapped his arms around her like drowning person would a life-preserver. She slowly wrapped her arms around him, feeling his face bury in her shoulder. Wasn't this what she wanted all this time?

"I want to be better for you." He sobbed. "Please, give me another chance."

"You need to quit drinking." She felt the words come out without her permission. A new voice that wasn't her own. "And the drugs."

He pulled back and wiped the back of his face with his hand. "Okay," He nodded. "I'll quit for you."

She wiped a stray tear from his face. He answered by pressing his cheek into her hand, the same pained look in his eyes.

 _Is this what its like to be strong?_


	21. Chapter 21

**The emotion train is flying off the rails for the next couple of chapters so buckle up kiddos you're in for a bumpy ride**

* * *

Reagan had to pull out her phone to find her way home. As she was using her map app to pinpoint her location, her fingers froze. She looked at the skyline of the city as the sun set over the horizon, the orange swirling with the blue and purple of the sky. It was like something was speaking to her, something she couldn't figure out. It wasn't like trying to stumble over her basic Japanese as she maneuvered the city. No. It was in a language all of its own. The breeze whispering to her along with the waves crashing against bridge below her. Without thinking about it, she backed out of her maps app and clicked the phonebook.

She scrolled through her phone list, her finger resting on Naoki's name. She had saved his number in her phone after the first day at the hospital, when she found out that the man with the desperate eyes hanging over the bridge was actually a doctor, just like her. If she called, who would say that he would pick up? Did he want to talk to her after what she did to him? _I will get to you._ She vowed to herself. _But first…_

She continued to scroll and found Thomas' name and hit the dial button. He picked up on the third ring. "'ello?"

"Thomas." She could feel her mouth go dry, like it was stuffed with a whole cotton field. "I'm so glad you picked up."

"This isn't really a good time." He said. "I'm on Nate's yacht and-,"  
She watched the sun slowly fade behind the horizon of skyscrapers, the purple that lit up the sky turned into a cool blue. The song was changing. Like the colors of the sky. Like the winds of fate. Like the deepest parts inside of her. She no longer wished she could turn back time. If she had never agreed to come to Tokyo. If she didn't get lost that day, everything would've been so different.

She wouldn't have met Naoki. She wouldn't know what it meant to feel _so hard._

"Hello? Reagan? Hun, is there a reason why you called?"

"I'm calling because…"

 _I'm drowning and I can't find which way is up._

Her breath caught in her throat. Naoki's word echoed around her. It was in the stars that forced their way past the city lights. It was in the breeze that caught her hair and blew it into her face. It was in the waves below her. _He was drowning and he needed her to find the way up._

"Babe?"

"Thomas," She inhaled a deep breath. "I'm breaking up with you."

"What?"

She gripped the railing, watching her skin glow in the moonlight. Despite the wind that blew around her, despite the cool spring night air, felt her skin come alive with fire. "I've fallen in love with someone else."

* * *

Kotoko and Naoki stood over their toilet. She thought it was odd, how much everything had changed in six months. In a year. In five years. In five years she went from an infatuated teenager to a nurse to a mother. In five years she managed to feel every type of pain that was possible. In five years she found her voice and watched Naoki lose his.

She held the divorce pamphlets in her fists. They were a crumpled mess, the colors running together from the heat of her hand. Irie-kun held two half-filled bottles of pills. They were a crutch, she realized. They were a Band-Aid that was trying to cover a gunshot wound. Divorce. Pills. They were a Band-Aid covering a gunshot wound. The solution wasn't in any of these things. The solution was in them. They needed each other to get through this.

If only they had realized it sooner.

Kotoko began by ripping up the pamphlets and tossing them in the toilet water. She looked up at Irie-kun nodded, who pushed the flush-button and watched them disappear down the little toilet hole. "Let's save our marriage." She whispered. "For Kotomi. For us."

Irie-kun twisted the caps of the pill bottles and poured the yellow and blue pills into the water. She watched some float to the top, her stomach turning as she thought about all the heartache that was brought on by those little pills. _._ She looked up at Irie-kun, who stared back down at her, emotion in his soft brown eyes and nodded slightly. She leaned down and pressed the flush-button and the blue and yellow disappeared.

"I'll get sober." He said quietly, almost to himself. "For Kotomi. And for you, Kotoko. And for us."

Kotoko moved to take Irie-kun's hand. She looked back down at the now empty toilet. It was odd, but calming. Everything, all their pain, gone with the push of a button. She felt renewed, but more than that. Improved, somehow. "Let's take a trip." She suggested suddenly. "Let's get out of Japan for awhile."

"Okay." Irie-kun agreed. "Where?"

"I don't know. Somewhere exotic? Kobe?"

"Kobe isn't exotic."

"What do you suggest, then?"

"I've always wanted to go to India." He said.

"India." She repeated, her eyes still trained on the emptiness of the toilet. On the beginning of her new life with Irie-kun. "Okay, let's go to India."

She knew that healing would take time for the both of them, but it was a start.

It was a start.

* * *

Reagan dialed Naoki's number again, watching the screen of her phone go from roaming, and then connect and then ring, only to have a very polite Japanese lady come on to tell her that there was no one there at the moment or something.

She made a frustrated noise as she walked down the bridge back into the guts of the city. The clouds above the buildings were starting to swirl, threatening to storm. The breeze whipped her blonde curls into her face and she tried dialing again, only to come to the disconnected message again.

 _Come on, Naoki._ She pleaded and dialed again. _Please, pick up._

Something hit her like a sock to the gut. _I feel like I'm drowning and I can't find which way is up._ She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, making the person walking behind her bump into her. _"Sumimasen."_ They said and sidestepped her. What if Naoki was in trouble? What if he _tried_ something?

Panic seized hard in her chest and she tried dialing his phone again. It was like her nightmares. She was always a moment too late, a word too late. And then, just like that, he was gone. And it was her fault, because she wasn't there.

She wasn't there to save him.

"No." She breathed, holding the phone to her ear as she looked around, trying to grasp her surroundings. The streets were starting to fill up with people: old people with umbrellas and mothers pushing strollers and businessmen with their ties slung over their shoulder. They streamed around her on the sidewalk, all going different places. "Naoki, please pick up." She begged, feeling tears prick her eyes. "Please, pick up."

" _Gommenasai. Denwa ga tsunagarimasen."_

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling anxiety twist up her guts into knots. She couldn't be too late. _She couldn't._ She started jogging down the sidewalk in the general direction of his apartment. Her jogging picked up once she started recognizing the landmarks that made up the Yoyogi district, retracing her steps she took when she left the other morning. She ran as fast as she could go, until her lungs felt like burst and until her eyes stung hard with tears.

Reagan slowed only when she had to at an intersection. Using the opportunity to trying calling again. _Please, pick up._ She pushed her hair out of her face and tried to calm the hurricane inside of her. _Please, pick up._

"Hai?"

She could've screamed. She could've broke down in tears. She could've shouted for joy at the sound of Naoki's voice. But mostly she froze. She froze even after the light went green and the pedestrians around her started crossing the street. "Naoki," She choked, forcing out the only words she could manage. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" His voice slurred on the end and Reagan started moving. "It's too late for sorry."

"What did you do, Naoki?" She asked, ducking down a street, trying to find Naoki's apartment complex. There were so many, and they all held the same gray industrious look that she was unsure which one was his. There was a hard moment of silence on the other end of the phone. "Naoki?" She asked, hearing the panic in her own voice. "Naoki?"

"I'm ending it." He said finally, his words blurring together and then he said something that Reagan couldn't comprehend in Japanese.

"I don't know what that means." She said. "You said it in Japanese. Please, stay with me, Naoki. I'm almost there."

"It's my fault." His voice grew faint and far away. "I'm drowning, Reagan. And it's all my fault."

"Naoki!" She cried, tears making the streetlights grow brighter and her surroundings go soft. "Naoki, stay with me. Stay with me, okay. I won't let you drown."

 _I love you._


	22. Chapter 22

**Sorry I have not updated in a bit I have no excuse other than corn dogs are amazing. Do with that information what you will.**

 **As always, enjoy and review. I like reviews. I like reviews almost as much as I like corndogs.**

* * *

Naoki pulled pieces of glass from his arm, the shard giving way to the stream of dark red blood it was holding back, like a stopper in a sink. He winced with the pain, the burning of his skin being torn around the piece of mirror, the sting of an open wound in the air. But despite his nerve-endings telling him that he was feeling pain, it felt good. Like his skin was smothering him and he was letting it breathe. He wondered for a second if he continued to pull out the pieces, if he would just create enough holes to bleed out all together, like popping a water balloon over and over and watching the water pour out. Naoki dropped the bloody piece of glass at his feet, watching it bounce and then settle next to the bottle of booze he pulled out of the fridge.

He bent down and picked it up, smearing blood across the label, and then reached down again to fish for the pill bottle that he had kicked underneath his bed.

 _Nobody will miss you._

He unscrewed the pill bottle cap and instead of fishing for two or three like he usually did, he tipped the whole bottle into his mouth. They were bitter and sour and tasted like depression. They tasted like suffering, like a million reasons to end it and none to keep going. He washed it down with the alcohol, that bit the back of his throat and hit his chest, reminding him the reasons he couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe at all. It took three gulps, but he managed to get them all down.

He laid back on his bed and watched the blood on his arm dry into a rusty brown, watched the drops make their tracks to his elbows until they plunged onto his shirt or his pillow of his bedspread.

 _Nobody will miss you._

He closed his eyes and let that sentence reverberate around his skull. Would anyone miss him? His mother maybe. Or maybe she would be relieved. Relieve that she didn't have to worry over him anymore. His father too. Relieved that his fuck-up of a son would be gone. All the potential he wasted would be gone. The pedestal they tried to place him on would be gone. The craziness that everyone knew but never spoke of would be gone. It would make everything so easy for everyone.

He felt something underneath him vibrate and reached under the blanket to find his cell phone. "It's too late." He whispered, expecting his mother's name on the screen. He squinted hard, his vision going foggy as he tried to recall the owner of the phone number that looked so familiar. "Hai?" He answered.

"Naoki," Reagan's voiced breathed on the other end. "I'm sorry."

He forced himself to a sitting position, feeling heavy and uncoordinated. His toes feeling the cool hardwood when his feet hit the ground. He squinted at the bloodstains in his lap, her words surrounding him like smoke. "Sorry," He started to laugh at the cruel irony. "It's too late for sorry."

"What did you do, Naoki?" Her voice heightening with worry.

 _It's too late._

 _You left me._ He thought, feeling tears prick his eyes. His head felt like it weighed a million pounds and he held it heavily in his hand. _You left me when I needed you the most._

"Naoki?" She said, her voice rough with panic. "Naoki?"

He pushed all of the stuff of the surface in his bedside table and fought the tears that made his vision blurry. She wasn't allowed to feel sorry for him now. She left him. _She left him._ Now he was gone. He was ending it. She couldn't be the hero of this story. "I'm ending it."

 _And then I can be with Kotoko and Kotomi._

"I don't know know what that means." She said. "You said it in Japanese. Please stay with me Naoki. I'm almost there."

 _No. You left me._

 _But, that's your fault._

"It's my fault." He echoed the voice.

 _You're drowning and it's all your fault._

"I'm drowning and it's all my fault."

He felt like he was free falling through the air backwards, waiting for the impact that never came. The higher he got, the lower he felt. He was a sinking ship, being forced under the waves of his own mistakes. He did this to himself. His heartbeat spiked hard in his chest, like he was shocked and he felt like he was falling, even though he knew he was sitting upright on his bed

"Naoki, stay with me. Stay with me, okay." Reagan choked. "I won't let you drown. I love you."

 _I love you._

 _I made a huge mistake._

* * *

Reagan burst through Naoki's apartment door using the same shoulder-first technique she used when she went cow-tipping with her high school classmates when she was fourteen. _You put your power not in your shoulder._ One of the veterans of the sport explained. _But the force behind it. Works every time._ His apartment was quiet and dark and she fished for the light on the wall, frantically clicking it on with her fingers.

The light flooded his studio, and she saw him laying diagonally on the bed, his feet still on the ground. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open. Her heart sunk in her stomach as she quickly approached him. _Please, God._ She begged and leaned over him. _don't let me be too late._

"Naoki," She breathed, watching his eyes open a little. _Oh, thank God._ "I'm here. I'm here." She felt tears hot in her eyes, as she picked up his arm that was covered in jagged lacerations inspecting the damage, and then moved to press her fingers into the artery in his neck, fishing for a rhythm. "I'm right here." His pulse was erratic and all over the place. _He's in a-fib. This is going to get ugly fast._

"Reagan," He coughed, his eyes moving back and forth over his ceiling. "I…"

"How many did you take?" She moved onto the bed and and used her arm to support underneath his back. She could feel the hot sweat soaking through his shirt, and his heart pound hard into her hand.

He coughed as he sat up. "You came back."

"The ambulance is on its way, okay?" Reagan had called emergency services while she was running up the stairs of his apartment. They had said only a couple of minutes. But, she had seen enough overdoses that a couple of minutes might be too late. She pushed him into a sitting position, and moved to get behind him. His skin was hot and flushed like he was running a fever. He sucked in ragged breaths, his chest rattling as he heaved for air. _I feel like I'm drowning and I can't find which way is up._ Now he was actually drowning.

Guilt stabbed Reagan's chest. It was just like her dream. She was always a moment too late, a word short. And now her nightmares were coming true. She pressed her face into the space between his neck and his shoulder, feeling her tears soak into his shirt. She should have been starting CPR or trying to get him to throw up some of the pills. That's what a good doctor would've done. But, she felt frozen with fear and guilt and regret. All she wanted to go back in time to tell him how much she loved him underneath the flowering _ume._ She wanted to wrap him up and tell him everything was going to be alright. But she couldn't do that. And it made it one hundred times worse than her nightmares. She wasn't saving him from jumping, she was the reason he was jumping. "Just breathe." She sobbed. "Just breathe."

"I can't…" He slurred. "I can't see."

"The ambulance is almost here, okay?"

"Reagan," He gasped, his fingers shaking and slick with blood, found hers. "You came back."

"Of course I did." She sobbed and wrapped her arms tight around his waist, feeling the warm slipperiness of his bloody arm hot against her skin. "I love you."

"I think…" He managed. "I think I made a mistake."

Reagan pressed her face hard against his shoulder. "I won't let you drown." She breathed, vowed, and prayed all in the same breath. "I won't let you drown."

* * *

Kotoko tapped her toes at one of the many entrances to the check-in station of Haneda airport. There were many different people running in an out of the airport. Men in business suits looking important as they rushed about, travelled elders with all the stickers of the places they've been stuck to the sides of their suitcases, young people with headphones attached to their head.

A certain family caught Kotoko's attention, though. A young mother had scooped up her crying toddler, a little girl with two pigtails and large eyes and was dancing with her to calm her down. Kotoko watched hungrily as the young mother pushed her hair out of her baby's eyes and poked her cheek to make her smile, and laughed with her at absolutely nothing. They were in their own world, a mother and her child, enjoying the bond that only they shared.

Kotoko's arms ached to hold her own baby and she crossed them over her middle to keep the sorrow from spilling out. She would have traded the world to have her own baby back. To be able to shush her tears and dance with her and share laughter.

 _No._ She ripped her gaze from the family and back to the entrance. _We are healing. We are moving on from this grief._

To distract herself, she pulled her cellphone out to check the time. Naoki had told her this morning that he would meet her at the airport, which she thought was odd, since they were coming from the same house. He had explained that he had some things to wrap up at the office before he could head out. She was learning to trust him again. And he was trying at home again. Coming home at decent hours so they could eat dinner together. He wasn't drinking nearly as much. They talked about their days again. The other night she even coaxed a small smile out of him when she accidentally messed up the soup. _We are healing._

They were healing. One tiny baby step at a time.

There was a missed call from Mrs. Irie. Kotoko's brow furrowed and she hit the redial button. That was out of the ordinary too. She assumed though, that maybe she had some advice for them about travelling internationally. This was both their first international trip and Mrs. Irie had been so excited to hear that they were going.

"Kotoko?" She said, her voice panicked and rushed. "Have you heard from Naoki?"

Kotoko's pulse started to race. "No. I saw him this morning. Is everything alright?"

"We don't know." She said. "He called Papa this morning and he sounded…" She paused. "Off. Not himself. And now he's not answering his phone."

Kotoko squinted at the sun in the sky. It was a bright and sunny day with only a few clouds lazily making their way over the Tokyo skyline. "He doesn't usually answer his phone."

"He does if we call him more than once." Oba-sama voice was high with panic. "I don't know, Kotoko. He just…he didn't sound right. We are worried about him."

"I'll find him, Oba-sama." She said. "It's probably nothing."

"Okay," She conceded. "Call me as soon as you can."

Kotoko watched the clouds move across the sky, the breeze pushing them westward towards the continent of Asia. To India, where they were supposed to be flying to in a couple of hours. _We are healing._

She hoped.


	23. Chapter 23

Reagan pushed herself in between two nurses next to the gurney into the Emergency room. Dr. Takahashi met them just past the large double doors that separated the public area from the rest of the emergency department. From the calm into the storm.

Reagan didn't have time to grieve or plead or grovel anymore. He had slipped into unconsciousness in her arms and she knew that the overdose was going to suppress his central nervous system to the point where his brain would forget to tell him to breathe or make his heart beat. Every second was crucial to his survival and even though her heart wanted her to break down in the waiting room while she let the other doctors save him. Her medical training told her that she could do this, she had a handle on this, she could save him.

One more time.

And yet, it was still so hard seeing him like he was.

Naoki was pallid, the deep circles underneath his eyes the same dark purple as the sunset had been that night. They pulled him in a private room and pulled the curtain. Dr. Takahashi ran at his head, and started a ventilation tube with a laryngoscope and Reagan took over getting the heart monitor going, ripping open Naoki's shirt to reveal his bare chest. If it had been anyone else, Reagan thought it'd be comical, her Artic Monkeys t-shirt and jeans soaked in sweat blood while everyone else wore the stark white and minty blue of the hospital uniform.

"What did he take?" Dr. Takahashi asked as he pumped the ambu-bag over Naoki's face. He turned to a nurse and clipped something in Japanese. They all had the same face: sheer horror at the fact that Dr. Irie, the resident pediatric surgeon of Tonan, was hanging on the edge between life or death in their emergency room.

"Benzodiazepines." Reagan answered as she let her reflexes take over.

"What's his blood pressure?" Dr. Takahashi pushed his glasses up his face with the back of his hand as he pumped the ambu-bag with the other.

"He's spiking at one-eighty-seven over one-twenty." She read off of the board. "He's in A-fib and his pulse is off the charts."

Dr. Takahashi handed over the manual resuscitator to a nurse and moved to his line, picking up a vial and a needle. "I'm going to start a dose of flumazenil."

 _Flumazenil. Benzodiazipine antagonist. Reverses effects of benzodiazepine CNS suppression. Causes abnormal excessive and synchronous neuronal activity when mixed with ethanol._

Reagan whipped around and lunged towards Dr. Takahashi. "No! He's had alcohol!" She choked, feeling panic and anxiety spike hard in her chest. She _never_ felt like this about patients. She was always in control, always listening to the medicine, and waiting to speak back. It was a dance, like the tango or a waltz where every move was done harmoniously with the medicine. Every gesture, action and reaction was planned and thought out. She could see the future, she knew the past and she was always in the present. She needed to get back there. She needed to find the medicine again, the science and leave the emotion behind.

Emotion got people killed.

"It would've been nice to know that thirty seconds ago!" Dr. Takahashi said as he ripped the needle from the feed in Naoki's IV. "The dose has been given."

"Shit on a stick." She cursed and leaned over, pulling the penlight from Dr. Takahashi's lab coat pocket and peeling back each of Naoki's eyelids to watch his pupils dilate. She watched the left one dilate and as she went to check his brain activity of his left hemisphere, his head jerked back along with all of his limbs.

"He's having a seizure." She stepped back, watching Naoki's body convulse on the table. His limbs moving on their own. His face tightened with pain and relaxed and tightened up again.

 _Please don't give up._ Reagan pleaded.

 _Please don't give up._

* * *

Kotoko didn't know where to start, so she just started walking in the direction of their house. She tried calling Irie-kun and each time she tried she just reached his voicemail. Oba-sama said he sounded off. Kotoko scrunched her face as she tried to recall the last time Irie-kun sounded _right._

Where would he go? Why would he disappear on a day when they were supposed to leave the country? It seemed so strange, which worried Kotoko.

She walked as fast as her strapped heels would allow her to. Trying to rack her brain of all the places that he could be. She walked down the street, looking for Naoki in the faces of strangers.

Kotoko stopped and sighed heavily against the wall of a convenience store. It was like when she wondered where he wandered off at all hours of the day. He couldn't just be at the hospital. Or reading in his study. Or drinking, even if he preferred it to be that way. He was the pediatric resident. He couldn't even be around Satomi's daughter, let alone a million strangers' daughters.

Unless he disappeared to be with his _own_ daughter.

Kotoko started walking, slower this time. The cemetery where Kotomi was only a couple of blocks away from where she was. She had a feeling that is where Irie-kun was. But, at the same time, she hoped he wasn't there. Visiting her daughter was painful. It was painful to read her name and think of all the memories they didn't get to share. Think of how she was stolen far too young, too suddenly.

Kotoko hesitated at the entrance of the cemetery. The trees were blooming with bright green leaves of summer and the sun shining through the canopy made it seem less like a graveyard and more like a cheery park where she could find couples enjoying each other's company and parents playing with their children.

Maybe if she could just get Irie-kun to pick up his phone, she wouldn't have to put herself through visiting her dead daughter's grave. She pulled her phone out and dialed his cellphone again, counting the rings down to the automated voicemail message.

She twisted around and across the street, where the pavement ended into the edge of a bridge, she saw Irie-kun. His back was turned and he was hunched over the railing of the bridge, but she had spent enough time stalking behind him to know that was _definitely_ Naoki.

Kotoko quickly hung up her phone. "Irie-kun!" She called, and started from the entrance of the cemetery. "I found you!" Her heel caught on the edge of the cement and she pitched forward, trying to regain her balance.

She heard the squeal of brakes before she saw the flash of headlights. She saw the silver-chrome grill of the car before her world turned upside down. She heard the crack of her own skull against concrete before she felt the sharp pain shoot down her spine.

She saw the horror in Naoki's face before she registered that she had been hit by a car.

Then everything went white.

* * *

Naoki pressed his thumb into the jagged line that marred his forearm. It was an angry red and stung in the cool air. He had willingly cut himself with a piece of glass. It was bothering him that he resorted to that. He knew better, he was a _doctor._ But, he had forced himself off the pills. He needed something to drown out his own pulse in his ears, the voice that told him over and over that he was a murderer and his own daughter's screams. He had to stop the panic that gripped his chest, that smothered him.

He did it once and then he did it again and again and again until he couldn't see skin anymore. Until all the pain he felt was in his arm. Until he couldn't hear or feel or see his own self-loathing anymore. It got him high again, watching himself bleed. He was in control again. He figured out a way to turn the emotions off without pills or drinking. All the emotions. The hurricane in his chest that he couldn't get away from anymore.

 _What will Kotoko think?_

He shuddered as he imagined the look of hurt and betrayal on her face.

Naoki looked down at the water that churned underneath Odaiba. He remembered when he had first taken Kotoko here. He had only thought of her as a pest then. And yet, their evening eating hamburgers while Kotoko took everything in with her wide eyes was one of his favorite memories.

 _Look at you now._

He groaned audibly and pressed his fingers into his eyes until he saw fireworks. Now. Now it felt like his world was falling apart at the seams. He didn't know how to make it better. He only seemed to make things worse. The woman that was so madly in love with him yesterday was ready to sign the divorce papers today. His daughter was gone. He was throwing away his career, a profession he fought so hard for.

And the worse part was, _it was all his fault._

"Irie-kun!" Naoki turned to his name and saw Kotoko in her bright pink dress and lipstick waving at him from across the street. "I found you!" She took a step off the curb and at the same time, he watched a car fly around the corner going so fast, it was a flash of silver and headlights.

Then it was like time stood still. His breath caught in his lungs. His heart stopped beating. Everything was stillness and chaos at the same time. The only sounds he could hear was the ringing in his ears as he watched the front of the car slammed into Kotoko's body, forcing her forward and pitching her like a ragdoll on the street.

Naoki didn't even feel himself running to her. Or the tears on his face. He didn't hear the crowd around him screaming for an ambulance. He didn't hear the driver get out of his car, sobbing.

"Kotoko, no." He carefully picked up Kotoko in his arms. Blood was pooling around her head and he watched her eyes roll around before they focused on him.

"Irie…kun" Blood bubbled to her lips along with her words.

"I'm right here." He said, his vision going blurry as he held her. "I'm right here. Stay with me Kotoko!"

Her hand came up and touched him on his cheek, smearing a line of her blood down his face. "Why are you crying? Everything is so lovely, so beautiful."

"Kotoko, please." He begged. "Please stay with me. Please."

"I'll tell Kotomi you love her." Her eyes started to slide shut. "And that you miss…her."

"No, please." He sobbed. "Please."

"Sir," He was pulled back by a paramedic. "Sir, we have to get in here."

He watched as multiple paramedics started working on her, getting a line in her, strapping her to a gurney. She couldn't be gone. She couldn't. This was a nightmare. It had to be. This couldn't be happening.

 _Please don't give up._


	24. Chapter 24

"We need an MRI." Dr. Takahashi said as he pushed Naoki on his side and deftly missed a stray hand during a violent convulsion. "He could have lesions."

Reagan had cupped her hands around Naoki's head, trying to protect him injuring himself further as he continued to seize. That's all they could do, was wait out the seizure. Protect him from himself. When Reagan was in med school, she tried to imagine neurons like the old, rusty pistons in her dad's old tractor when they would backfire. She imagined them running at the same time, only to grind against each other and cause a misignition. She imagined that's what Naoki's brain was doing now: over-encumbered, misfiring. It was her job to make sure they didn't backfire. "We need to get his heart rate under control first. Otherwise he's going to cr-,"

Naoki went still, his jaw and eyelids going slack. A squeal behind them made them both jump and they turned to see cardiac arrest on the heart monitor. Reagan's heart sank in her chest. The thing with rusty, worn out pistons is that they couldn't do anything without an engine putting the power behind them. Naoki's heart wasn't keeping up with his body's demands. If they didn't act fast, the benzos would put him in a multi-system failure. They would lose him.

 _She would lose him._

"No," She breathed and pushed Naoki so he was lying flat on his back again. With her cupped hands, she started CPR, her blonde hair that was sticky from sweat and blood falling into her eyes. "Stay with me. Stay with me."

Dr. Takahashi barked something harsh in Japanese and a nurse hurriedly rolled in with a crash cart. Reagan watched as the emergency room doctor started the charge the defibrillator. He yelled in Japanese and Reagan was harshly pulled back from Naoki's body by a nurse. They all watched with wide eyes as his body popped off the table as hundreds of volts of electricity ran through his body.

Then all eyes turned to the heart monitor.

 _Nothing._

"Charge it again." Reagan could feel tears threatening to mist in her eyes. The choke of grief in her throat. Emotion got people killed. But, she couldn't listen to that anymore. This couldn't be happening to Naoki.

This couldn't be happening.

This couldn't be happening.

* * *

Naoki watched in a stricken paralysis as a gurney with Kotoko's body strapped to it moved swiftly through the doors of the emergency department. It was a room he knew well, nurses who he recognized by the shifts they worked, Dr. Takahashi and his thin wire-rimmed glasses that would slip down his nose when he was in a rush. He could close his eyes and recall the thrill of the emergency when he was the resident physician, something new to learn always being pushed through that door.

Now he was frozen, like someone glued the bottoms of his shoes to the white tile underneath him as he watched as a nurse manually pumped resuscitator bag at Kotoko's face. Her eyelashes that she carefully curled and applied mascara to, the pink bow that was now tatters in her hair, stained by the blood leaking down her forehead.

This couldn't be happening.

"Kotoko." He said, words getting mixed up in his mouth. Naoki was always the one to have the last word, the one to know exactly what to say and exactly when to say it. He could speak five languages. Now, he couldn't even say his wife's simple name.

"Irie."

Naoki's gazed snapped to a pair of intense eyes in his face.

"Irie, go sit in the waiting room." Takahashi said. Naoki looked down at the red bloom on Takahashi's scrubs. It was in the shape of Iceland and looked odd on his white shirt. _Kotoko's blood._

"But-,"

"You're in the way." Takahashi said, the silver of his glasses glinting. "We'll come get you when you're finished."

 _Are you going to save her?_

 _Is she going to be okay?_

Naoki's mind swam with questions, but all he could vocalize were the vowel sounds of a drowning man. A hand grabbed his arm and he looked down at a nurse he saw sometimes in the breakroom, but didn't know the name of.

He was pulled to the waiting room by the nurse and he turned and watched her move back to the door. "Wait!" He managed and the nurse turned around, her hands in the front pockets of her uniform.

"Yes, Dr. Irie?"

"Is this my fault?" The words tumbled out before he could hold them back, in one big rush, like a deflating balloon.

The nurse gave him an empathetic look and shook her head. "No, Dr. Irie. It was an accident."

The nurse disappeared behind the heavy double doors and Naoki sank into a waiting room seat, his fingers raking through his hair and down his face, nails digging into his skin. He was numb and on fire at the same time. He was paralyzed and manic at the same time. He was in disbelief and grieving at the same time. He knew the answer to his questions and knew nothing at the same time.

This couldn't be happening.

* * *

"Charge it again!" Reagan barked again to wide, frightened faces. She ripped the paddles out of Dr. Takahashi's hands. "Charge it to four hundred."

One of the nurses twisted the dial and Reagan could feel her hair stand on end with the sudden electricity in the air. She placed the paddles against Naoki's chest. "Clear!" She called and everyone stepped away from his body. With a jolt, his body jumped and Reagan watched the monitor of the electrocardiograph, waiting for any sign of movement, any sign that he was back.

 _After five minutes of ventricular fibrillation, the lack of oxygen causes the brain to start to die._

Reagan felt the threatening tears hot against her face and her heartbeat loud in her chest. She couldn't lose Naoki. _Just breathe._ She had coached. _Just breathe._

 _I think I made a mistake._ That's what he had said. He didn't want to die. She was going to save him. She was going to do. She promised him that he wasn't going to drown.

"Charge it again."

"Dr. Dunn-," Takahashi started.

"Charge it again!" She snapped back. "Thousand volts this time."

Dr. Takahashi twisted the dial himself and Reagan felt the electricity in her hands match the hum of her own pulse. She pressed the paddles to Naoki's chest and managed a clipped "Clear!" before she hit the button.

A third jolt ran through Naoki's limp body and Reagan watched the line on the heart monitor jump with the electricity and then flatten out again. "Please." She begged. "Please go."

Fifteen long seconds ticked by. Fifteen seconds that stretched on forever. Fifteen seconds that were an eternity for a brain that was lacking oxygen.

"Dr. Dunn-," Dr. Takahashi said. "He's flatlined."

"No," Reagan choked, her hands still on the paddles. _Another fifteen seconds._ "No. Just wait."

 _Another fifteen seconds._

"Dr. Dunn-," Dr. Takashi said more firmly, this time.

"Just give him a second." She said, her eyes glued to the line on the screen. "Just give him a second."

"Reagan," Her first name caused her to snap to Takahashi. His glasses were sitting cocked on his face and Naoki's vomit stained the white of his scrubs. "He's gone."

"No," She shook her head. "He can't be."

"It's time to call it."

"No," Tears sprung from her eyes and she picked up the paddles. "He's going to make it. Charge it again."

"It's time to call it."

 _This can't be happening._

* * *

 **i realized that i left this off at a horrible, critical point with no explanation and while i will still not provide an explanation, if you're still around you're a beautiful dolphin and i love you3**


	25. Chapter 25

Naoki pressed the call button, tears misting over his eyes, making the ER waiting room and the cell phone he was holding, and the world around him hard to see.

"Moshi moshi?" Kinnosuke answered.

Naoki wanted to call his parents and have his mother be the voice of reason and tell him that it was going to be okay. He wanted to call Shigeru and tell him that these might be the last moments he has with his daughter. He wanted to call Kotoko's little friends, the short one and the one with the long hair because he knew that they would be down here in minutes if they knew their best friend's life was in danger.

But instead he pounded call at Kinnosuke's name. His head was swimming and he couldn't figure out why Kinnosuke should be the first to know. He just knew that out of everyone he considered, Kinnosuke seemed like the right option.

"Kinnosuke," Naoki gulped breaths like he was drowning. "Kotoko was hit by a car. How fast can you get down to Tonan hospital?"

"Irie? Kotoko was hit by a car?" He asked dumbly. "What happened?"

"That's not important!" Naoki breathed, panic making his voice hitch. "Just get down here." He hung up his cell phone and ran his fingers through

 _Hold on, Kotoko, please._

* * *

 _Hold on, Naoki._

Reagan prayed for any sign of activity. Everyone was praying. Precious seconds had gone by and the line of the heart monitor was still flat. She prayed to God for a jump, a blip, anything to let her know that he was still with her.

That she hadn't lost him.

"It's time to call it." Takahashi insisted.

"No."

"Dr. Dunn…"

"I said no."

They watched for another couple of seconds that felt like a generation to Reagan. Tears spilled over as she watched, blurring the screen. She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe she was too late, that her nightmares were coming true.

"I'm calling it." Dr Takahashi announced. "Time of death…"

 _Beep._

Reagan almost jumped with joy. There was a collective gasp as the line of the heart monitor jumped and then jumped again. But there was no time to celebrate. They had to act fast to prevent brain damage from being without oxygen for so long.

Reagan looked down at the broken man and the table, tears dropping onto his forehead.

 _I told you I would save you._

* * *

"Irie!"

Naoki stood up at his name and saw Kinnosuke and Shigeru running, still in their restaurant uniforms. Kinnosuke's hair was windblown now and Shigeru put his hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

"What happened?" Kinnosuke asked, his eyes flashing with panic.

"I…She…" Naoki started, feeling fire in his face. "She was trying to cross the street and a car flew around the corner." Naoki breathed in one big rush. "She didn't see it coming."

"Is she okay?" Shigeru asked.

Naoki shook his head and sat back down in his seat. "I don't know."

"Aren't you a doctor?" Kinnosuke asked, worry making his voice high. "Can't you go back there and check?"

"Lay off of him, Kinnosuke."

"No!" He retorted. "He deserves it. He's been horrible to Kotoko since Kotomi passed and all Kotoko wanted was comfort from her _husband_. I'm not going to let him get away with it any longer."

"Kinnosuke," Shigeru started in an angry voice.

"No," Naoki interrupted, feeling tears choke him out, but he kept his eyes glued to the floor. "He's right. Kotoko deserves so much more." Naoki pressed his thumb in the lacerations on his wrist, feeling the pain radiate through his arm.

"Well arguing isn't going to help Kotoko."

"Dr. Irie." Naoki heard Takahashi's voice and everyone snapped to attention. Takahashi's hair was messed up and his wire-framed glasses were crooked on his sweating face. His scrubs and lab coat were stained with blood, but Naoki noticed none of that, instead he noticed the sadness in his old classmate's eyes. "I'm sorry, Naoki." Takahashi cleared his throat. "The trauma to Kotoko's brain was too much."

 _She's gone._

"What does that mean?" Kinnosuke spat.

 _She's dead._

"We tried everything we could…"

 _Kotoko is gone._

"But the impact rendered her brain-dead. We have her a life-support machine, so you can say your goodbyes. I'm so sorry."

 _And it's all your fault._

Naoki felt like he was being sucked through a black hole. A vacuum of nothingness that was pulling him from the inside out, leaving no traces. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. He was numb like fingertips in the snow. It was a nightmare he couldn't wake up from. Everyone he loved was being taken away from him. What did he have left?

What was there left to live for?

* * *

Reagan held onto Naoki's hand, and watched his chest slow inhale deep breaths and then exhale, fogging up the oxygen mask he was wearing. She counted the beats in his wrist with her fingertips, starting over every sixty seconds. She watched his eyelids flutter and his fingers twitch and his nose crinkle.

It was all she could do to keep herself from hyperventilating. To keep herself from melting into a puddle of tears on the ICU floor. To keep herself from cracking under the fact that _she almost lost him._

She couldn't believe that this was the same man that died on her table only an hour before. She couldn't believe this man was bleeding to death right in front of her eyes. She couldn't believe that this man was internally hemorrhaging, seizing, and vascularly failing from an overdose.

She couldn't believe that she was the one that saved him.

It was like a dream, her heart caught in her chest as she waited for the fall. The moment where she snapped awake in her bed. The moment when her eyes opened to a fresh, new day. She was frozen. She felt like a soap bubble, floating and floating until someone popped her. And poof, she would've been gone.

"Kotoko." Words in a language Reagan couldn't understand gurgled to his lips. His eyes fluttered open and landed on her. "Reagan." He breathed.

"I'm right here." She choked and clasped his hand in hers, and rose to her feet so that she was in his line vision. She started for her pen light hanging in the pocket of her scrubs and shown it in his eyes, testing for reaction. "I'm right here."

"I'm not dead." He said, an air of disbelief in his voice.

Normally, she would've been taking stock of the damage. Cataloging symptoms. Looking for signs of a brain damage. Normally she would notice the slow reaction in his eyes and the way they tracked around her instead of focusing. She would notice the confusion and note it as amnesia. She would be looking for signs of a stroke or hemorrhage, anything out of the ordinary. But all she could see was the pink of his lips and the breath against his oxygen mask and the fact that he was warm in her hands.

She choked on a sob. "No, you're not."

His eyes focused on her and a small smile crossed his lips. "Thank you for coming back."

"You too." She said and pushed his hair off of his forehead, feeling hot tears drip off of her face. "You too."


End file.
